JANE SCHECKTER is a mainstay on the New York City music scene. A Bistro Award winner and a five-time MAC award nominee, she has been wowing audiences with her velvet voice at major New York venues, including Birdland, Birdland Theater, the Metropolitan Room, the Iridium and Lincoln Center Jazz at Rose Hall. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote of her “bright, clear voice with a brassy edge and a luscious, rounded vibrato, meticulous phrasing, a sultry lower register...and she swings!” Scheckter is now releasing her fifth album, I’LL TAKE ROMANCE, a collection of 17 tunes from the Great American Songbook and beyond. Scheckter always attracts some of the top musicians from both coasts to join her on stage and on her recordings. On her previous album, Easy to Remember, she is accompanied by Tedd Firth, Jay Leonhart, Peter Grant, Bucky Pizzarelli, Warren Vaché, Harry Allen, Aaron Weinstein and guest artists Tony DeSare and Gil Chimes. For VI’LL TAKE ROMANCE, she once again brought on board her old friend, TEDD FIRTH, as the musical director, pianist and arranger, bass player JAY LEONHART, and drummer PETER GRANT, as well as renowned cornetist and flugelhorn player WARREN VACHÉ. She also sings a duet with the young vocalist and rising star, NICOLAS KING.
A native of Springfield, MA, Scheckter showed her musical talent early in life, singing and playing the piano from age five, and adding the violin at nine. She began performing on stage at various venues in New England with her father, a harmonica player who headlined theaters across the country. She has been singing ever since. Her first two albums, featuring Mike Renzi, Jay Leonhart and Grady Tate, I've Got My Standards (DRG) and Double Standards (Doxie), elicited raves from the critics. Downbeat Magazine praised her "Ella-styled artistry," and the New York Daily News cheered "a brilliant star." Her third album, In Times Like These, drew praise from Rex Reed, who wrote, "Great CD, beautifully performed. Jane Scheckter has done a marvelous job of demonstrating, once again, that all is not lost if we can still find love and hope...in times like these."
Scheckter is a multi-talented artist. She is not only a talented singer, but she is also an accomplished fashion designer and theater performer. Although her heart was in music, her parents persuaded her to have a career to fall back on, so she attended Pratt Institute, where she majored in design and starred in most of the campus’ theatrical show.
After graduating, she immediately found work as a fashion designer on Seventh Avenue and in Milan, Hong Kong, and New Delhi. Her designs were featured in the leading fashion magazines and modeled by the likes of Lauren Hutton. She started singing in New York clubs at night while holding down her design job by day.
She would take long lunch hours to rehearse with her accompanist, an up-and-coming pianist named Barry Manilow, who played and sang backup on her early demo records. Scheckter sang backup on Could It Be Magic, Manilow’s debut album.
Scheckter also appeared in "Taking Off," Milos Forman’s first U.S. film, along with other unknowns, Carly Simon and Kathy Bates. But singing remained her first love, and despite her burgeoning career as a fashion designer, she said goodbye to the fashion world and concentrated solely on music.
It did not take long for her to find her footing in the music world with appearances in New York and Los Angeles. She also toured the world as one-third of Tuxedo Junction, the vocal trio that had the number one disco album in 1978. She made guest appearances on American Bandstand, Dinah Shore, Midnight Special, Disco Fever, and the Jerry Lewis telethon from Las Vegas.
These days, Scheckter sings regularly in New England, Paris (Le Bilboquet, La Villa, Café Laurent) and on the Cote d’Azur, where she launched and performed for two years at the Majestic Hotel’s Cannes Jazz in July series, is a frequent performer at the Royal Jazz Lounge in Antibes, and Vegaluna, Cannes, and was featured for two years at the National Fête de la Musique celebrations in Valbonne and Biot.
I’LL TAKE ROMANCE comprises smart, cosmopolitan love songs that have been covered by many artists over the years. But Scheckter breathes new life into these chestnuts with her warm voice and conversational style, creating the perfect confluence of sophistication and emotional depth.
Scheckter infuses every song with swing, whether it is a ballad like “Isn’t It a Pity” or the lovely vocal/piano duets “If Love Were All” and “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” or gentle mid-tempo swingers like “A Beautiful Friendship,” featuring Vache’s distinctive cornet, or “Love I Hear,” from Stephen Sondheim’s score from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, featuring a scat solo by bassist Leonhart. She also includes one song with all original lyrics. Her old friend, Mickey Leonard, who passed away in 2015, wrote an instrumental tune called “A Song for Bill Evans.” During the pandemic, Scheckter asked Roger Shore, a New York-based lyricist, to write words to the song about people who pass through our life and change it forever. Scheckter also contributed lyrics to the song, which she renamed “Looking Back.”
Rather than choose songs that are world-weary or filled with unrealized longing, Scheckter, who has been married for over 40 years, chose songs that reflect the maturity and insight garnered from a long, happy marriage. With Scheckter’s subtly sultry voice backed by superb musicians, I’LL TAKE ROMANCE shows that some love songs, like love itself, have a timeless quality.
