For those unaware, Detroit-bred pianist and composer David Janeway has spent more than five decades developing a voice shaped by one of jazz’s most influential musical communities. Raised in the city’s deeply rooted jazz tradition, Janeway came of age in an environment where mentorship, groove, and collective spirit defined the music.

As a teenager he encountered the music that would shape his life—hearing Oscar Peterson at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge and soon after discovering The Creative Profile, a Coltrane-influenced ensemble led by trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and tenor saxophonist Sam Sanders. The experience redirected his musical path and placed him within a lineage of Detroit musicians committed to expressive individuality within the jazz tradition.

Through Sanders, Belgrave, Harold McKinney and others, Janeway absorbed a philosophy that emphasized rhythmic authority, melodic clarity, and the responsibility to contribute one’s own voice to the evolving language of jazz. By his late teens he was performing regularly in Detroit while continuing his studies at Wayne State University, gaining formative experience on bandstands that valued both discipline and creative freedom.

Across the decades that followed, Janeway built a career defined by thoughtful composition, expressive lyricism at the piano, and a deep commitment to interaction within the ensemble setting. Alongside his musical life, he also pursued a parallel career in psychiatry — an unusual dual path that reflects the same core principles that inform his music: attentive listening, communication, and human connection.

These ideas find their fullest expression in Janeway’s trio work. Over time he has developed enduring musical relationships with drummer Billy Hart, an NEA Jazz Master whose influence on modern jazz spans generations, and bassist Robert Hurst, a fellow Detroiter with whom Janeway first performed in the early 1980s.

Their shared history—rooted in the Detroit tradition and extended through decades of individual artistic growth—forms the foundation of a trio language defined by trust, rhythmic sensitivity, and collective interaction.

Live at the Blue Llama is Janeway’s third trio recording with Billy Hart (Steeplechase-Distant Voices, Forward Motion). Captured in Ann Arbor on June 15, 2024 at the Blue Llama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor, the performance reveals three master musicians in spontaneous conversation, drawing upon standards and original compositions while allowing the music to unfold with the openness, depth, and shared understanding that can only emerge over time.

1. ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE (Jerome Kern) [6:28]
2. A CHILD IS BORN (Thad Jones) [4:51]
3. FORWARD MOTION (David Janeway) [5:49]
4. SWEET AND LOVELY (Gus Arnheim) [7:07]
5. GARDENIA (Gary Peacock) [7:30]
6. K’S SHUFFLE (David Janeway) [4:40]
7. STAR CROSSED LOVERS (Billy Strayhorn) [6:46]
8. YOU AND THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC (Arthur Schwartz) [5:47]
9. I SHOULD CARE (Sammy Cahn) [5:38]
10. SEARCH FOR PEACE/BLUES ON THE CORNER (McCoy Tyner) [8:39]

Captured in an intimate club setting, with the recording standing as a clear expression of Janeway’s artistic perspective, they open on a spirited ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE before bringing us the veritable gossamer of A CHILD IS BORN, the quietly furtive FORWARD MOTION, the perfectly jaunty SWEET AND LOVELY, with the sheer elegance of GARDENIA.

Along next is the vivacious K’S SHUFFLE which is itself backed by the delicately sculpted STAR CROSSED LOVERS, the gracefully fearless YOU AND THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC, the new set rounding out on the melodiously rhythmic I SHOULD CARE, coming to a close on the bluesy roustabout of SEARCH FOR PEACE/BLUES ON THE CORNER.

PLAYERS & INSTRUMENTS:
David Janeway: piano
Robert Hurst: bass
Billy Hart: drums

www.davidjaneway.com

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