It’s been three years since Jeanne Newhall recorded an album.  If the world is in a different place, so is she.  As a vocalist, composer and classically trained pianist, Jeanne Newhall has always made a habit of change.  Her explorations have taken her to the realms of jazz and R&B and pop and rock, ever expanding her musical universe and revealing themselves in her rich, warm vocals, lyrical vocabulary and the immaculately nuanced notes of her piano. She describes her new CD as “a step further on that path.”

A collection of 10 original songs, GLIDE will surprise and intrigue devoted fans and first-time listeners.  “It is more raw and exposed emotionally. It is open. It is closed.  It is grown up. It is childlike,” she explains.  “Every day something happens in each of our lives. Something is happening in every one of these songs. My hope is that my songs reach out and touch whatever is happening in people’s lives.”

The title track, light and airy, filled with sunlight and grace, bubbling with harmonies, is a song that goes directly to one’s state-of-mind--with advice impossible to ignore.  “’Glide’ is the soul of this album,” says Newhall. “It’s open. It has its own energy.  Its own movement.”  In a similar vein is “Pink Day,” a mid-tempo track with strong vocals and an infectious attitude and beat; “If the album has a mind, this song is it—it is a state of mind.”  The words and melody of “Medallions” are bittersweet. “It’s about my father and my faith. It lies at the heart of the album.”  “And,” Newhall continues, “’Reach Me Tonight’ is the song that links in the body.  It’s about the always present longing and desire but never attainable physical fulfillment.”  The writing, the musicianship and the arrangements here are all first-class, and the ins-and-outs and interplay of voice and instruments in the mid-tempo “Hot Cold,” and “I Would Die” are true pleasures. Rounding out the picture are “Understand,” Surrender” and “Give My Heart Away,” ballads that speak of compassion and transformation, of love and loss. In “Gaelic Mourning” Newhall has once again provided listeners with a perfect ending, a stark, achingly beautiful celebration of death and life inspired by John O’ Donahue’s book Anam Cara.

Describing the distance between this album and Wild Blue, her last release, Newhall explains: “For the first time, I was going to sing and play piano and keyboards at the same time, not go into the studio later and overdub the voice. I wanted honesty, warmth, and I wanted to experience the genuine act of creating music with the musicians.  That’s what we did: Russ Kunkel, the brass ring for me as far as drummers go; my bassist Matthew McKenzie; Mike Miller on acoustic and electric guitars.  Mike and Matthew had been part of my musical family before, Mike from Wild Blue and Matthew for several albums back. We laid it down in two takes usually, three at the most – just in case I needed to make a minor edit or if there were any digital glitches.  Even though I had written lead sheets for everyone, they were only a reference point. Many precious and spontaneous music moments emerged from like hearts and open minds. They helped me express myself vocally and musically in an unusually satisfying way.  The connection was felt all around, and shared with the recording engineer guru Don Murray. From a production point, I left lots of room in the music for inhaling and exhaling—it has to breathe. I have locked that in from my nine years of traditional Ashtanga (eight-limb-ed) royal yoga practice. In Ashtanga one must follow the breath and move with specific inhales and exhales. Nothing happens without the breath. No asana happens without this process leading the way.  A perfect metaphor for life.  Every song on this album is a nugget.  Sometimes, at the end of a take, we would all just sit with a moment or two of silence, hanging onto what just happened.  It was joyful, sensuous, funny, and all love.”

Jeanne Newhall’s life has always been filled with music—and surprises.  Raised on a farm in the sometimes vibrant, sometimes stark landscape of Arizona, she grew up in the shadow of the Sierra Estrella Mountains west of Phoenix.  When her music-loving parents bought her a piano, the six-year-old Jeanne could barely reach the keys. She made her professional debut eight years later, and before she was 16, she’d graduated high school, mastered six Mozart concertos and moved to New York City to study piano with Nadia Reisenberg.  She subsequently turned down offers from the Juilliard, Eastman and Curtis Institutes, opting to study piano with the acclaimed Abbey Simon at Indiana University, and ultimately earned a degree in performance from Arizona State University.

 While in college, friends introduced her to jazz; The connection was immediate. “A whole new world of possibilities that weren’t limited by the boundaries of classical music suddenly opened up for me—melodies, voicings, improvisation,” she remembers. “I almost left school then and there.”  She didn’t leave school, she altered her course.  She listened to all the jazz she could find. She listened to R&B, which she had loved since grade school. With college behind her and now living in Phoenix,  the classically trained pianist was determined to make a career creating her own kind of music. She began to explore the possibilities of adding her voice to her repertoire of instruments and found a voice teacher. “It took me seven lessons before I could open my mouth in the company of friends,” she recalls.  Today, Jeanne Newhall, her voice and her music have friends all over the world.

GLIDE is her 15th album, the newest entry in a catalogue that reflects the kaleidoscope of her life and music.  The five CDs that comprise “The Piano Street Series” include discs celebrating the rich musical heritage of France (Paris Nights), American ragtime (Cakewalk) and the works of Dvorak, Saint-Saens and Chopin (Esther A Classical Piano Tribute). Bedouin’s Paradise featured “Race Thru The Clouds,” a collaboration with guitarist Peter White that received considerable airplay in England and led to Newhall appearing with the smooth-jazz legend at venues such as the Pizza Express in London’s Soho.  Other standouts on the list include Beautiful, For No One To See (Christmas and Wintersongs), and E’Sensual.  In 2006, the Seattle-based independent Blix Street Records released the well-received Wild Blue, an album that showcased Newhall’s talents on songs ranging from Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” and Marcus Hummon’s “Wild Blue” to the Marvell & Strachey jazz standard “These Foolish Things” and her own compositions.

Newhall is now based in Los Angeles and her club and concert schedule ensure her standing as a frequent flyer.  Her recordings have earned airplay on hundreds of radio stations throughout Europe, Canada and across the U.S.  She’s been a Steinway & Sons Piano Artist since 1998, and Hal Leonard has published Jeanne Newhall Piano Solos, a 70-page book featuring 13 of her original songs.

GLIDE introduces a new Jeanne Newhall: an artist ever in transition whose words and music have the magic to affect and enrich all those who listen.