BOP STOP is excited for the return of Detroit native and NYC-based pianist/composer, David Janeway. David and his trio, featuring the talents of master bassist Rodney Whitaker and Detroit drummer Ali Jackson, will be promoting David's latest release, Live at the Blue Llama, on Steeplechase. Tickets for this evening are $25 each (plus a $3 fee).

This event will not be livestreamed.

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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.

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About the new album, Live at the Blue Llama:

Captured live at Ann Arbor, Michigan’s renowned jazz club Blue Llama in June 2024, David Janeway presents himself at the height of his powers, joined by the world-class rhythm team of Robert Hurst III and Billy Hart. A Detroit-bred musician with a deep lineage in that city’s storied jazz tradition, Janeway channels decades of mentorship, swing, and blues-rooted expression into a set that is both powerfully modern and historically grounded. The trio’s telepathic interplay fuels inventive takes on standards, luminous ballads, and Janeway’s distinctive originals, all delivered with the group’s tightly converging sound and emotional depth that define his artistry. Following acclaimed SteepleChase releases with Hart and Cameron Brown, this live recording stands as Janeway’s most vibrant statement yet—an inspired document of three master musicians creating in the moment.

“It is no small feat to say that not only is Janeway’s playing sparkling but so is his ability to write tuneful compositions.” Michael P. Gladstone, All About Jazz Review

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www.davidjaneway.com