Her original songs range from jazz to pop to Broadway musical and her buttery rich contralto is backed by top notch Chicago jazz musicians whose solos will knock your socks off.

10 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Big Band, EASY LISTENING: Cabaret



Details:
With her fifth release, No Easy Way, Laughlin showcases her talent, polished technique and insight as a composer lyricist and producer. This is Jeanâs fourth collaboration with gifted arranger and co-producer Jim Martin. There is a wonderful group dynamic between Jim and Jean and co-producer/sound engineer Freddie Breitberg which helped create an album full of warmth and love. Adding to the mix, Jean is backed by a full orchestra, including top notch Chicago jazz musicians whose tasteful and inventive improvised solos enrich each piece. Thomas Yang (Chicago Musical Connection) and his masterful string section complete the orchestra which, with Jimâs superb charts help make Jeanâs music come to life. Her ballads, which range in genre from jazz to Broadway musical to standard pop, touch on the everyday challenges of our lives. In her big band jazz tunes, she shows us her sense of humor as she contemplates lifeâs absurdities.

"I've been singing for as long as I can remember. I came from a very musical family--mother, father, aunts, uncles, the lot of them. Though I studied piano from a very early age, my voice has always been my instrument. I started performing when I was quite young-on the nationally televised Bob Crosby Show at the age of 11-then throughout my high school years and college. After college, where I majored in Speech and Drama, I settled in Chicago where I worked in recording studios doing work in television commercials,voice overs radio spots, and performing in live musical industrials and cabarets. It is after I took a very long break from work, to raise my children, that I started writing songs.
I had returned to singing, was recording an album and found that, though I loved the standards that I had been exposed to all of my life, I wasn't able to fully express myself singing them.
I started out slowly, including only one of my own songs on that first CD. I've recorded exclusively my own songs since. It's been very cathartic for me, as well as a little frightening in that I'm exposing my personal feelings for all to hear."
Jean Laughlin

----Jean released her first albumâIâm Glad There is You-- in 1992. She wrote and produced Confessions of a Woman, released in 1996, Who am I? in 1998, and What am I Looking For in 2001. Jean has received significant airplay on major market stations throughout the Midwest.