Janette Mason
ReWired
by Howard Lawes
Photograph by John Lyons
Last month’s Whats New (April 2025), featured Paul Desmond playing his version of the traditional English folk song, Greensleeves, emphasising that some of the best jazz performances use music that was never intended to be played as jazz. Other examples include John Coltrane playing My Favourite Things, composed by Richard Rodgers for the Broadway musical, The Sound of Music, and Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis that started life as the Concierto de Aranjuez composed by Joaquin Rodrigo. Quite apart from the actual performance, what makes these iconic jazz pieces great is also the quality of the arrangement. Sometimes, as with Paul Desmond and John Coltrane, the performers do some or all of their own arrangements but for larger ensembles, and to achieve a polyphonic yet cohesive result, a specialist arranger, such as Gil Evans, who worked on Sketches of Spain, is employed.
​
The job of an arranger is to take either new or existing music and to decide the contribution of each instrument in a performance. The ensemble may be ready-formed, in which case the arranger must understand what a particular instrument or musician brings to the ensemble, or the arranger can introduce new instruments to enhance the sound and texture of the performance. The arranger may also alter the composition in terms of tempo, rhythm, harmony and dynamics to a greater or lesser extent. Arrangers need a thorough understanding of music theory and, particularly for small ensembles, they also need to understand the personalities involved.
​
Janette Mason’s new album, ReWired, features nine tracks, one new composition and eight new arrangements by Janette of tunes that she loves and that have been chosen to illustrate different eras of music. On the album Janette plays piano and keyboards, Tom Mason plays bass and Eric Ford plays drums. Paul Booth plays saxophone on two of the tracks and Roderick Lewis Frazier, Brendon Reilly and Natalie Williams provide vocals on another.
​
Here is a short introductory video for the album filmed at Pizza Express Club in Soho:
Janette grew up in a musical family, her mother being the keyboard player in Gracie Cole’s all female band that was active from 1952 – 1956. Subsequently Janette’s mother became the musical director at a south coast holiday camp, a job that included leading the house band in support of visiting star performers. Janette remembers the Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and American vocalist Dakota Staton performing with her mother and listening to Sergio Mendes and other latin-american music from the extensive family record collection. She and her sister would sing along, approximating to the Portuguese lyrics.
​
Janette followed in her mother’s footsteps, learning the piano and passing all the classical piano grades while at school. After school, rather than study music at college she began playing the piano in pubs and clubs, learning valuable lessons about audiences and establishing a reputation as a versatile accompanist for all types of artists. As she became more well known she became an in-demand session player and then musical director for singers and bands on tour such as Jimmy Sommerville, Pulp, Oasis and Seal. The two gigs that she played in with Oasis at Knebworth in 1996 had a combined audience of 250,000 people, a record number for an outdoor gig in the UK. Looking to diversify into other fields of music Janete attended the London College of Music where she gained a MMus. degree in composition for film and television.
​
Janette combined her work in popular music with a parallel career in jazz, music she had always loved since her youth, inspired by her parents record collection, and particularly a tune called April Joy by guitarist Pat Metheny. Her large body of work with the singer Carol Grimes includes an album called Alive at Ronnie Scott’s (1994) and she also featured on albums by Robert Wyatt, Claire Martin, Deirdre Cartwright and Ian Shaw as either musician or arranger before producing her debut album, Din and Tonic (2004). Janette continued her musical direction work at Pizza Express Jazz Club in London and diversified into TV shows, and by making good use of her studies at the London College of Music she composed scores for several feature films. Din and Tonic and the following album, Alien Left Hand (2008) featured many well-known musicians as well as the vocalist Lea DeLaria. Most of the tracks were new compositions by Janette and the albums were very well received with Alien Left Hand nominated for a Parliamentary Jazz Award. Her next album, D’Ranged (2014) marked a change of direction in that almost all the tracks were new arangements of existing songs. John Fordham in the Guardian regretted the move away from jazz but nevertheless praised the album for its superb singers, jazz-steeped session band and arrangements that sympathetically reinvent the songs.
​
Here is a video of Dominatrix from Alien Left Hand played at the Hideaway in 2015.
​Janette developed her musical arranging skills while working with Lea DeLaria at Pizza Express. Each month they would feature the songbook of a well-known artist such as Aretha Franklin, David Bowie or Stevie Wonder to name a few. Janette would create a jazz-infected version of the songs for Lea which were still recognisable to the audience, but which provided a more interesting listening experience. In 2010 Janette became musicial director at the recently opened Hideaway Jazz Club in Streatham, London, a purpose-designed venue that featured topflight jazz musicians three nights a week and provided audiences with cocktail bar and restaurant facilities. Janette successfully introduced the arrangement techniques that had been successful at Pizza Express and used them with up-and-coming singers at Hideaway. Arrangements of the Great American Songbook have long been a staple diet for jazz musicians, but Janette used modern, popular songs with which younger audiences were acquainted Sadly, Hideaway failed to survive the restrictions on public gathering due to the COVID pandemic and closed in 2020.
​
Janette’s recording career continued with the release of Red Alert (2018), a crowdfunded trio project that highlighted the division of society and lamented the terrorist attacks that took place in London, and an EP called Wall to Wall Bowie (2021). Janette toured with Tony Visconti’s Best of Bowie project in 2022 and started a new tour with Juliet Roberts called Ayra; she is also Artist in Residence at the Exchange Theatre, Twickenham.
For her latest release, ReWired (2025), Janette has retained long term collaborator Tom Mason on bass but brings in drummer, Eric Ford to form the classic jazz piano trio. Each track, except one, is Janette’s arrangement of a popular song, but for this album Janette uses songs from different eras. The earliest composition is Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered from the 1940 Broadway show, Pal Joey. In this case the arrangement takes the form of a Bach Prelude, interspersed with a lovely bass solo and improvisation on the piano. The next song chronologically is Lullaby of Birdland that was a swinging hit for Sarah Vaughan in 1954. Janette mixes up rhythms and tempos in a series of conversations between bass and piano that really add interest to a very well-known song. The 1960s are represented by a funky version of Eleanor Rigby, while The Man With The Child In His Eyes is one of three from the 1970s where Kate Bush’s evocative song is beautifully played including some bowed bass. It was selected by Jazz FM as their 'track of the week'.
Don’t Look Back In Anger recalling Janette’s momentous weekend with Oasis at the 1996 Knebworth Festival is just a fabulous tune in any format and Janette’s solo rendition really does it justice. Good 4 U was a hit for Olivia Rodrigo in 2021 but this instrumental version with a sensational saxophone solo from Paul Booth and Janette on Fender Rhodes takes the tune to a whole new level. The one new composition is called Prayer For The Planet, a heartfelt plea in music to everyone to act before it is too late. For this track, Janette’s trio is joined by Paul Booth on saxophone and a trio of singers and we can only hope that people are listening.
​
Jazz musicians have long used new arrangments of existing songs to create great jazz and Janette Mason is an excellent example of this practice. Her understanding of how wonderful music is constructed and how to use her musicians to the best effect pays testament to her remarkable skill and long experience in the music industry. ReWired is a fitting celebration of an outstanding talent.
​
Janette's album ReWired was released on 25th April 2025 and is available here where you can also listen to the tracks Cars and John, I'm Only Dancing. Janette's website, including gig dates, is here.
2025.5