Janel Leppin: Her Own Space

The first thing you learn about musician/composer Janel Leppin is that labels don't fit her music very easily. From structured compositions to free-wheeling improvisations, Leppin does it all. She has made chamber jazz recordings, worked with punk groups, and created lush solo vocal works, all in an effort to tell her own stories and create her own space in music.

All About Jazz talked with Leppin in June 2025 about her new group, Skullcap, and their new album, Snakes of Albuquerque , as well as her work leading the Washington, DC-area jazz group Ensemble Volcanic Ash (EVA) and her solo music.

Skullcap, named for a traditional Indigenous herb used for healing anxiety and depression, consists of Leppin on cello and minimoog, her husband Anthony Pirog on guitar (who also has recorded with Leppin as part of Ensemble Volcanic Ash and Janel and Anthony), and Mike Kuhl on drums and percussion. "We've been playing with [Kuhl] for 15 years in various groups," Leppin said. "And Anthony and I have been wanting to record with a drummer." Unlike the music that Leppin writes for EVA, these songs were created more spontaneously. "We just started writing and it was so easy. Usually, it starts with the bass line. And Mike likes to come up with things in the practice room. Anthony and I were almost always writing in the moment."

The result is a manic soundtrack to a cross-country trip that Leppin and Pirog had made before. The songs segue from the dreamy cello playing of "Pine Trees of Tennessee" to the melancholy melody of "Bear Out There" to the western-tinged "Snakes of Albuquerque" to the funky swing of "Desert Turtles."

"The Skullcap trio is so tight, we trust each other so well," Leppin said. "All three of us are at a certain level where it's not like one person lagging behind; we can really push ourselves in that group."

On this album, Leppin treats her cello more like a bass. "I am a bassist at heart. I've been a bassist touring with a punk band. I love to play bass. I've played bass for years. But the thing about it is that that applies to my cello." In Skullcap, the combination of the heady bass lines the cello plays with the complicated drum beats Kuhl plays produce some deep grooves for Pirog to solo over, such as the skewed surf guitar of "Rt. 40," the pyrotechnics on "Journey to the Sunset," and the gentle riffing on "Orange Sky."

Although trained as a classical cellist, Leppin first became interested in jazz through a teacher while studying at George Mason University. Later, while jamming with her husband Pirog, who she has known since high school, they began to play tunes like Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Porkpie Hat." Still, it took some time for her to adapt the cello, not a usual instrument for jazz improvisation, to the genre. "There was a lot of self-instruction, learning the language and how to navigate that on the instrument, which is just a beast." Leppin and Pirog eventually turned jamming into a full-fledged duo, releasing three albums under Janel and Anthony that ranged from art-pop vocal works to chamber jazz instrumentals and what was the start of both Leppin's recording career and working in improvisation. Her prowess on other instruments than cello, including keyboards, guitar, and bass, as well as her vocals, adds to the arsenal of sounds with which she colors her music.

While Leppin expressed admiration for both classical composers, such as Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, and jazz composers such as Julius Hemphill, she wants to maintain her own sound. "I'm a little bit like David Lynch," Leppin suggested. "I've been watching his retrospective at AFI Silver [the American Film Institute theater in Silver Spring, Maryland], which starts each film with him talking about how he loves a story with abstractions, saying, 'That's where you can really get in.' That's exactly what I like."

She doesn't look to other cellists either. "I try honestly not to listen to other cellists because I don't want to sound like anyone else. This is very important to me. I just want to have my own space."

For Ensemble Volcanic Ash, Leppin takes a more rigid approach to composing than for Skullcap. She writes out specific works that play with time and melody, with room for improvisation by members of the group (which include, at present, Pirog on guitar, saxophonist Brian Settles, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Larry Ferguson). "At home, I have a music studio with a CP 70 [Yamaha electric piano] and I compose everything for EVA there. And every morning, when I'm in the process of composing for several months at a time, I write. The next EVA is slated to come out next year."

The songs on both EVA albums (Ensemble Volcanic Ash (2022) and Ensemble Volcanic Ash: To March Is to Love (2024)) have jagged and changing tempos that keep the listener totally engaged with the music, each song telling its own story. While the music can get chaotic at times, it always pulls back into form and resolves itself. For example, "Woven Forest" from the first album starts with a meditative melody shared by the saxophone and cello over a rollicking bass-and-drum rhythm for half the song. Then, suddenly, it changes tempo, becoming more frantic with Pirog unleashing a furious guitar solo. "I want there to be a lot of interlocking parts," Leppin said, "and I'm listening for the timbre of the instruments in my head."

While working on the third EVA album, she has to account for the ever-changing personnel. "It's slightly pared down," she noted, due to saxophonist Sarah Hughes leaving the DC area. "And now we have one less voice, right? She's been with me since 2007 so that was a really big hit, because she has this nice silvery tone." And this was after harpist Kim Sator, who played on the first EVA, was no longer available for the second album. "They're just different phases. We don't really have that much opportunity to practice. So that's the other thing. I have to find people who are able to just get up there and do it."

Although she has mostly had the same personnel for the two albums, it has been difficult to keep a group together. "I really want a much larger group, but it's so hard to organize that many people and to pay them properly." Leppin makes good use of the talents of her fellow musicians, writing pieces that have their instruments interact and integrate elegantly.

And she creates opportunities for herself to present her instrument in a different light. "I want to sound like a guitarist on the cello," she said, "because there is a limitation on the cello already, culturally speaking, because this is how we play: slow and low, very melodic. It's beautiful, I love it, but I need to push myself."

When Leppin is not working with her bands, she performs solo and has released several albums of voice and instruments as well as, in 2023, an album of solo cello compositions, The Brink. She recently was the opener for the Niger musician Mdou Moctar during his acoustic tour, playing mostly music from The Brink. "It was such a pleasure to be able to play, opening for Mdou, because the crowd was totally silent. Everywhere I went, even like places where I thought, 'Oh, there's no way these people are going to listen to me,' but they did. They listened, and it was so incredible."

An unusual entry in Leppin's catalogue is The Heart Sutra from 2020 in that it is not her original compositions but instead a presentation of the music of Susan Alcorn , legendary pedal steel guitarist who has worked in the avant-garde and jazz fields (and who sadly passed away in January 2025). "I met her when we both played the High Zero Festival in Baltimore," she said, "She had only been in Baltimore for a little bit. She had moved there from Houston, and immediately I loved her sound, because it sounds so classical to me. Just other worldly. I remember saying to myself, 'I want this person to teach me,' and she ended up being a spiritual and music teacher to me."

In 2012, Alcorn asked Leppin to curate a group and arrange her music for her residency at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, New York, since Leppin had been working with Alcorn for years on her music. This gave Leppin a chance to hone her arranging skills, focusing on the beauty of Alcorn's complex and inventive music. "I chose the best musicians that I knew liked her music, who would be able to listen to it and intuit what it was, because there was no conductor. There were some scores, kind of, for the pedal steel, but there were all these tensions and unwritten notes that she would play. I wanted to incorporate all that, because that's all essential to her playing."

In addition to music, Leppin is also a textile artist, and her artwork adorns her two EVA albums. Like with her compositions, her weaving requires intense focus. "There's a commitment when you start a piece. You just need to get through it. And you have to trust the process. It's a very similar process for writing a record."

To March Is To Love: nylon, cotton, satin, silk, toile, nylon string.

With new albums coming out—solo, Janel and Anthony, and Ensemble Volcano Ash—over the next year or so, Leppin is keeping busy and always looking for new ways to present her music. "I just hear things in my head, and then I figure it out on the instrument, and then I hear a harmony, and then I always want a countermelody. And then I really want a hook, because I love hooks. Who doesn't like them? I want something that people will take away because it makes you feel something. And then we're going to go out, we're going to dive off the deep end. It's going to be great."

Comments