HOME

BIOGRAPHY

MUSICAL HISTORY

RECORDINGS

RAVE REVIEWS

WOMEN'S RETREATS

JAN'S TEACHING

UPCOMING EVENTS

PRESS KIT

CONTACT

JAN GARRETT

Biographical Information

Jan Garrett is a multi award winning songwriter, jazz singer, and master creativity coach who believes that “The chance of a lifetime is to be yourself.”   A lifelong professional musician and wild-ass visionary, she has toured with Steve Martin, John Denver, and the Dirt Band, and has appeared on the Tonight Show and in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Jan has been a student of meditation for (omigod) well over 30 years.  The mother of identical twin daughters, she is also a wilderness vision quester and Certified Laughing Instructor.  Perfect.  She teaches Authentic Voice and Piano-by Ear, and has led creativity workshops and women’s retreats for decades.  

Jan lives in the mountains of Colorado near Aspen with her husband and musical partner JD Martin.  Together they travel to spiritual centers around the country singing, playing, and teaching “The Heart of Harmony.”  Jan & JD have produced 6 CDs of award-winning original songs, the latest of which is called “No Complaints Whatsoever.”   All are available at:

Jan 


Finding the Beloved everywhere....

A spiritual revolutionary at heart, Jan is committed to love, compassion, humor, and deep ecological sanity. Integrating both light and shadow, her writing, performing, and teaching are generous, wholistic, creative, emotional, inclusive, relational, and participatory in nature, and she really enjoys stringing long lists of adjectives together. In fact, the longer she sits typing at the computer, the more rambunctiously she tends to go for the cheap laugh. Fortunately she also believes in miracles and listens for angels. She feels most at home in the natural world.

Garrett has two solo CDs of original material: "Don't Go Back to Sleep," and "Gypsy Midwfie: Songs for Soul Retrieval,"  She and JD have also written and recorded four more albums of award-winning songs:  “I Dreamed of Rain,” “Winter Songs,” “Already Home,”  and their latest, “No Complaints Whatsoever.”   Feel free to listen to audio samples  here.

Jan’s instructional CD on "Body Chewing" is also now available for serious voice students and the shamelessly curious.

Musical Overview

Jan Garrett is first and foremost a jazz singer.....velvet voice, educated musical ear, improvisational spirit..... which means that if she forgets the words (as she is wont to do in the heat of the moment) she can make something up and it will be OK. This gives her deep peace of mind. Astrologically her moon is in Leo, making her quick to discreetly mark off a little personal territory in center stage, while at the same time fully revelling in collaborating and playing WITH other people. In fact, her greatest joy is to "disappear into the music," which is why you often see her wearing clothes in emergency day-glo colors.......

Her cameleon-like tendency to fall in love with whatever great musical style she happens to get close to has seen her through the blues, decades of folk mania, jazz, country music, big band swing, soul, all eras of classical, celtic and assorted old-timey & bluegrass bands, even toning and chanting.  As a rule, she does not "write" songs. They come upon her and take over her mind & body for random intense periods, and if she is lucky, both she and the music come out whole and decipherable on the other side. It is a mysterious, private, and holy process.  If someone were to offer her a great deal of money, however, she could be persuaded to focus and produce prolifically like the true professional she is.