“With any type of good music, you can do what you want with it, even twist everything into a jazz format,” says Janette Mason, whose excellent new album ReWired features covers of a range of her favourite chart classics, including tracks from Gary Numan, David Bowie and Kate Bush.
Mason, who was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, in 1963 and brought up in Hastings, is a pianist, composer, producer and arranger with a sparkling musical C.V. As well as her own acclaimed albums, Mason performed in the 1990s with leading pop artists such as Oasis, k.d. lang, Seal, Pulp and Suzanne Vega. She has also collaborated closely with Robert Wyatt.
“I like to think of myself as a well-rounded musician, and all of the things I have done musically have helped with my jazz,” she tells UK Jazz News, in a Zoom interview from her north London home. “I would also say that what I do as a jazz musician has helped with the pop stuff. When I played with Oasis, I basically sat down and played whatever I wanted.
They never said a word to me, so I did whatever I do, and it worked. All those things have been a good influence and, of course, the kudos has helped because jazz is a niche market and you need other things that bolster your career.”
Music is in Mason’s bones. Her mother Margaret played vibraphone and organ in the Gracie Cole Big Band in the 1950s, and her father Ian was a jazz drummer and vocalist. Her mother later became Musical Director of a jazz club at a theme park in Hastings. She fondly remembers a front room full of musical instruments, including a drum kit, a Hammond organ, vibes and a grand piano. She was brought up on some fine music, especially that of Oscar Peterson, Sergio Mendes and Erroll Garner.
It was Mason’s mother who first taught her to play chords on a piano – and who encouraged her eventual dream of being a professional musician. “My mum said, ‘you know what you are going to sacrifice’, because she was a musician all her life – and she was very aware of the ups and downs of it. Music is something you have to dedicate yourself to wholeheartedly. She was always very positive about my playing. If people came round, she would say, ‘Do you know my daughter plays with Oasis?’ and would start name-dropping. It was really embarrassing! But she was very proud of what I did, and I feel very humbled that I am carrying on what she did. I’m also trying to pass it on. I do a lot of teaching with young students and see it as a lineage. I am grateful I get to do this.”
Mason, who is also presently Artist In Residence at The Exchange Theatre in Twickenham, says her own direct influences as a keyboard player were Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. Her own playing on ReWired is a triumph of elegant tones and passionate swing. She says it took her six months to tie down the rights to the eight songs she reinterprets: ‘Cars’ (Gary Numan), ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ (David Bowie), ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ (Rodgers and Hart), ‘Good 4 U’ (Olivia Rodrigo), ‘The Man with the Child in His Eyes’ (Kate Bush), ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (Beatles), ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ (George Shearing) and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ (Noel Gallagher).
Mason has a history of taking songs and putting her own spin on them – 2014’s D’Ranged also featured a Bowie cover – and she wanted to keep the idea going with ReWired. “I hit a certain age a short while back and I wanted to look back on my career, my influences and the people I had been working with,” Mason explains. “It felt like the right time to look back and bring all those influences into the album.”
The record, which features longtime collaborators Tom Mason (bass) and Eric Ford (drums), is beautifully recorded and arranged, with a consistency you might expect from a 20-year working relationship with engineer and producer Andrew Tulloch. The sole original is ‘Prayer for the Planet’. Mason wanted to represent her own feelings about climate change and why we need to take care of the earth. She says adding it was vital because “it was important for me to have my own voice on the album.” The composition, which features vocal contributions from Roderick Lewis Frazier, Brendan Reilly and Natalie Williams, is one of two tracks to feature the scintillating tenor saxophone playing of Paul Booth.
Mason rightly says that Booth, who has played with numerous top artists including Van Morrison and Jacqui Dankworth, adds “extra colour” to the album – and he will be one of numerous guests to join in the fun when Mason launches the album with a special gig at the Pizza Express in Dean Street on Wednesday 14 May. There will also be another London gig at The Vortex on 17 July.
The pianist believes that the studio is a “more pressurised environment” than playing music live, although the final product, with minimal overdubs, has the raw energy of live performance. She plans to tour the album throughout 2025 and 2026. “Albums have a real flow to them, and I still love getting vinyl out and putting it on. We are releasing three singles from the album, but I hope everyone, even younger listeners, discover the pleasure of listening to music that way,” she adds.
Which was the most difficult of the eight covers to arrange in her own way for a jazz trio? “The trickiest was the modern one: Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Good 4 U’,” she explains. “I originally planned to record with a singer for a prior project but I thought, ‘I wonder if I can make this work for a piano trio?’ We really had to work hard to shape it and actually changed it in the studio.”
Mason was a child of the seventies, and although her album is instrumental, the tracks were chosen because they all “have got strong lyrics that mean something to me”. The songs are well known in the main – you may find them sounding in your head as the lovely music plays – and when they road-tested them in a few gigs (“you have to, it’s like kneading dough into place before you bake bread,” she says colourfully) it was pleasing to see the reaction from the audience. “With a song such as ‘Cars’ I am trying to draw people into the music and then throw them a curveball, because they know the melodies, so you can play around with the music and surprise listeners. I approach my music very much in a visual way. I am trying to create an audio landscape, in a way, and create feelings of tension and release. The challenge is how you make that work with a small number of musicians.”
Mason smiles when I ask whether such an experienced musician ever gets nervous. “Nerves never go,” she replies. “It’s a bluff game, and you learn to deal with it. I look back now and think of some of the live television I did back in the day. I think, ‘Oh my god, how did I do that?’ The TV crew are counting you down and you are literally going out live. That was one of the scariest things I have done. You learn to cope. Like everything, it is all about being prepared. I still practice as often as I can.”
She is a musician with a lot of irons in the fire – including her gigs with singer Juliet Roberts – and says among her most challenging performances are the ‘Holy Holy’ concerts with Tony Visconti. “We play Bowie exactly as it is,” she explains. “That is a whole different test. I programme the keyboards and reproducing that music is a challenge, but such a pleasure. My career has come full circle. I am now working on and playing music I listened to and was influenced by as a teenager. Sometimes I can’t believe that has happened. I have reached a point in life where I just feel happy. That’s where I am at.”
ReWired as a whole feels like a representation of a career’s work and a homage to creativity, helmed by someone who has worked with some incredible musicians. As for the listeners, Mason says she would just like them to enjoy the musical experience. “Music is a powerful thing, and it is a good escape. If they enjoy a small percentage of it, and it takes them somewhere else, that will be wonderful,” she says.
ReWired will be released on 25 April 2025 on JM Music in association with ECN Music
Live Dates:
Thursday 1 May – Eastbourne, Bohemian
Wednesday 14 May – London, PizzaExpress Jazz Club, Soho (album launch) book here
Thursday 17 July – London, The Vortex
