GRAMMY-WINNING VOCALIST, ARRANGER & LONGTIME MANHATTAN TRANSFER MEMBER JANIS SIEGEL ANNOUNCES THE ART OF VOCALESE, HER FIRST SOLO PROJECT FOLLOWING THE LEGENDARY GROUP’S FAREWELL
A CELEBRATION OF THE VOCALESE TRADITION FEATURING REDISCOVERED JON HENDRICKS LYRICS, WITH MUSIC BY CHARLIE PARKER, MILES DAVIS, DAVE BRUBECK, CLAUS OGERMAN, ERROLL GARNER, AVERAGE WHITE BAND & MORE
FEATURING JOHN DI MARTINO, LONNIE PLAXICO, ED CHERRY, FRANK VIGNOLA, WAYNE ESCOFFERY, BOBBY SANABRIA, RAUL MIDÓN, LEA DELARIA, LAUREL MASSÉ & LAUREN KINHAN
OUT SEPTEMBER 25 2026 VIA ORIGIN RECORDS
The Art of Vocalese is the forthcoming album by 9x Grammy-winning vocalist, arranger, and founding Manhattan Transfer member Janis Siegel, to be released September 25, 2026 via Origin Records. Produced by Siegel and centered on the tradition championed by Jon Hendricks, the album features pianist and arranger John Di Martino alongside bassist Lonnie Plaxico, guitarists Frank Vignola and Ed Cherry, saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, percussionist Bobby Sanabria, drummer Vince Cherico, vocalist Raul Midón, Lea DeLaria, and Siegel’s vocal trio JaLaLa with Laurel Massé and Lauren Kinhan. Recorded at Sear Sound and Bass Hit Studios in New York, the project draws from bebop, swing, Brazilian music, fusion, funk, and ensemble arranging through one of jazz singing’s most exacting traditions.
Over the past five decades, Siegel has become one of the most recognizable voices in modern vocal jazz. As a lead singer, arranger, and central musical force within 10x Grammy winners The Manhattan Transfer, she helped bring sophisticated close-harmony singing to a broad popular audience. By the 1980s, the group had become one of the most ambitious vocal ensembles of its era, moving fluidly between swing, bebop, R&B, Brazilian music, fusion, and vocalese.
The Manhattan Transfer became the first vocal group to win Grammy Awards in both pop and jazz categories in the same year, while the group’s 1985 album Vocalese received 12 Grammy nominations and brought the form to a vastly expanded audience. The group’s deep engagement with the style grew in part from founder Tim Hauser’s close relationship with both Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks, whose writing and musical philosophy became central to the ensemble’s evolution.
Siegel played a major role in shaping that sound. She won a Grammy Award for her vocal arrangement of “Birdland,” wrote five arrangements for Vocalese and seven for Brasil, and helped “get the music up on its feet” through the group’s intensive arranging and rehearsal process. She also sang lead on signature recordings including “Operator,” “Chanson D’Amour,” “Birdland,” “Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone,” “The Boy from New York City,” “Spice of Life,” “Mystery,” and “Ray’s Rockhouse.”
Alongside her work with The Manhattan Transfer, Siegel built a substantial solo discography that includes Experiment in White, At Home, Short Stories, Slow Hot Wind, The Tender Trap with Fred Hersch, I Wish You Love, Friday Night Special, Sketches of Broadway, NightSongs, Honey & Air, Mazel, Cryin’ in My Whiskey, and The Colors of My Life. JazzTimes called Short Stories “among the most graceful, thoroughly heartbreaking efforts of the modern era.”
She has also recorded and performed with Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra, Renee Rosnes, Bob Dorough, Nils Landgren, Bobby Sanabria’s Multiverse, The Count Basie Orchestra, Enka singer Mika Shinno, Luciana Souza, and Raul Midón. Beyond performance, she teaches at NYU alongside New York Voices colleague Lauren Kinhan, co-hosts WBGO’s Singers Unlimited with vocalist Lezlie Harrison, and curates and sings along with Lauren in a regular live vocal salon called “Vocal Gumbo.”
Siegel’s musical roots stretch back long before The Manhattan Transfer. Raised in Brooklyn, she absorbed a wide spectrum of music through New York radio in the 1950s and ’60s — Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, opera, rhythm and blues, instrumental pop, and the British Invasion. She began recording professionally at 12 years old with a female folk trio, cutting her first single live in the studio with a full orchestra and a single microphone. By the late 1960s, she was immersed in Greenwich Village’s folk scene, playing clubs including The Gaslight, Folk City, Kenny’s Castaways, and The Bitter End. Her group opened for artists including Big Mama Thornton, who introduced them as “Three Queens and a King” — the “King” being their male bass player.
That background fed directly into the art form at the center of The Art of Vocalese. Unlike scat singing, which uses improvised syllables, vocalese places lyrics onto preexisting instrumental solos and arrangements while preserving their phrasing and rhythmic shape. “The great vocalese singers bring emotion to it,” Siegel says. “You become the soloist.”
No figure looms larger in the tradition than Jon Hendricks, the legendary lyricist, singer, and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross co-founder whom Time dubbed “the James Joyce of Jive.” Hendricks became both mentor and close friend to Siegel over decades. He frequently visited her Manhattan apartment with cassette tapes, headphones, and yellow legal pads spread across the room. Hendricks often described the process simply: “The music talks to you.” “It’s almost like he’s translating from one language to another,” Siegel says. “He’s translating the little black notes into emotion, into words, into stories, into meaning.”
“This was my first project immediately after the retirement of The Manhattan Transfer,” Siegel says. “It’s as much a tribute to The Manhattan Transfer and the work we did as anything else.”
The material emerged unexpectedly. Following the group’s farewell concerts — culminating in a sold-out final performance with The Diva Jazz Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on December 15, 2023 — Siegel began sorting through decades of manuscripts, charts, tapes, and lyric sheets in her apartment. “It was definitely a mourning of sorts,” she says. “The Manhattan Transfer was my life. My focus, my priority for all of those years.” Among the stacks were previously unrecorded Hendricks lyrics, including complete treatments of Charlie Parker’s “Barbados” and Miles Davis’ version of “Bye Bye Blackbird,” and a lyric to Average White Band’s “Pick Up The Pieces.” Several of the Hendricks lyrics on the album had never previously been recorded.
Pianist and arranger John Di Martino serves as Siegel’s principal musical partner throughout the album. The two first met on The Jazz Cruise before collaborating on Siegel’s 2013 release NightSongs. “John truly loves songs and singers. He knows where to play and where not to play,” Siegel says. “He listens. He leaves space. And, man, does he swing.”
The album opens with “Back to Barbados,” built around Parker’s calypso-inflected bebop classic. Siegel sings both Parker’s and Davis’ solos through Hendricks’ lyrics of homesickness and escape from city life. “It’s Sand, Man” reunites Siegel with original Manhattan Transfer member Laurel Massé and New York Voices vocalist Lauren Kinhan as JaLaLa, reviving a Lambert, Hendricks & Ross-associated tribute to tap dancer Howard “Sandman” Sims. Raul Midón joins Siegel on “Bye Bye Blackbird,” singing the Miles Davis solo before delivering a vocal trumpet solo of his own.
“In the Presence & Absence of Each Other” draws from Claus Ogerman and Michael Brecker’s Cityscape, a recording Siegel says she “wore out” after its 1982 release. Siegel lyricized the melody and part of Brecker’s solo herself before handing the latter half to Wayne Escoffery. Dave Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance” — with lyrics and arrangement by Larry Kerchner, and instrumental contributions from Di Martino — becomes a multi-meter feature for JaLaLa, while “Down for Double” pairs Siegel with Lea DeLaria on a Basie-associated swinger from the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross orbit.
The album also includes “’Til the Earth Stands Still,” based on Joe Zawinul’s interpretation of Friedrich Gulda’s “From Vienna With Love,” and “Garner’s Stomp,” Siegel’s adaptation of Erroll Garner’s version of “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” first assembled during the COVID lockdown through layered home-recorded vocals. The closing track, “Pick Up the Pieces,” transforms the Average White Band hit through another Hendricks lyric. The song also carries a personal historical connection: The Manhattan Transfer recorded its debut album at Atlantic Studios while Arif Mardin was next door producing Average White Band’s AWB, which introduced the original version of “Pick Up the Pieces.”
For Siegel, the album brings together decades of work in vocal harmony, arranging, storytelling, and ensemble singing. “This record reflects where I am right now,” Siegel says. “This is my culmination as a harmony singer. That’s what I am really, at the core. I love being in the middle of a chord. I love hearing harmony around me and knowing I’m part of making that chord sound.”
Tracklisting
- Barbados ( “Back To Barbados”)
- It’s Sand, Man
- Bye Bye Blackbird
- In the Presence and Absence of Each Other
- Unsquare Dance
- Down for Double
- ’Til the Earth Stands Still (“From Vienna With Love”)
- Garner’s Stomp (“Stompin’ at the Savoy”)
- Pick Up the Pieces (K.O.B. GoGo Mix)