Judith Owen
When singer/pianist Judith Owen was at performing arts school, she played a song about losing her mother, her eyes shut because it was so deeply personal. Judith had never played piano in front of anyone, and when she finished, there was an unnerving hush in the room.
“Oh, it's as bad as I thought,” was her immediate assumption. But as she made her way back to her seat, Judith realised people were either spellbound or moved to tears by her powerful, raw performance. Recognizing her sublime musical gift, her professor asked why she was majoring in acting and not in music.
“That moment in my life is what changed everything,” she says. “It was the turning point, and I never looked back.”
Fifteen albums later, Judith has reached millions worldwide, her wildly charismatic and electrifying live performances – marked by sold-out shows packed with intimate, passionate songs – continuing to thrill and spellbind her audiences.
Music is in Judith’s blood. Born into an extremely musical Welsh family, she grew up in London surrounded by classical music, ballet, theatre, and fine arts. The family had moved to the capital so that Judith’s father could pursue his opera singing career. From the age of five, Judith spent weekends backstage at The Royal Opera House Covent Garden where her father sang for 35 years, soaking up the electric atmosphere and operatic sounds as she mingled with the extraordinary singing talents Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.
“The first music I ever heard was my father's singing,” she says. “I never knew a time where I wasn't hearing people singing and playing piano, and where we weren't singing as a family in close-part harmony. I had no idea how remarkable and special the life I had as a kid was, being at
the Royal Opera House, watching all the dress rehearsals. It set me up as a theatrical, dramatic and emotional human being.”
It was also “joy and respite” from growing up in a home pervaded by the sadness of her mother’s long-term mental illness. Furthermore, Judith would play piano to “entertain” herself, teaching herself to play by ear. Alongside classical music, Judith was exposed to the many jazz and blues icons, Broadway musicals and “sad Welsh folk music” loved by her parents – a concoction that would become her signature sound. From a young age, she began performing at a variety of venues around London, her unique hybrid of classical and jazz vocals winning a regular slot at the prestigious Ronnie Scott’s. Today, her stylistic range covers an unparalleled span of rock, pop, classical, jazz, blues, and musical theatre.
Those varied musical roots are as important as each other, because they capture the spectrum of emotion that is at the heart of Judith’s music; the ability to make her audiences laugh and cry in equal measure. “Classical music always moved me to tears, jazz and blues always made me smile and want to dance around the house," she says. "That’s always been the two sides of the coin for me. They are big emotions, but they're necessary emotions.”
Following her move to the USA, Owen enjoyed critical acclaim for her many self-penned albums, but her star soared with ‘Come On and Get It’, an album made in search of joy and escapism during the pandemic and released in 2022.
With multi-million streams, ‘Come On and Get It’ emerged from Judith’s fascination with the music of some of the gutsiest, and often forgotten women of the jazz and blues world, including unsung trailblazers Nellie Lutcher and Julia Lee whom she discovered as 45s nestled within her father’s record collection. Captivated and enchanted by these “unapologetic” chanteuses of the Forties and Fifties (Nellie Lutcher, Julia Lee, Pearl Bailey, Dinah Washington, Blossom Dearie, Peggy Lee, Julie London), Judith embarked on a deep dive into their music and history. The result was a gloriously uplifting and empowering album hailed “one of the most joyous releases this year” by The Times. “It was extraordinary,” she says of its success. “And it was the first time that I had made a record that was brimming with joy.”
Garnering support from flagship jazz radio stations including Jazz FM, ‘Come On and Get It’ led to sold-out shows accompanied by her New Orleans All-Star Band in Paris and Milan, two homecoming performances at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, a five-night residency at New York’s McKittrick Hotel, a series of summer festivals around Europe, and a packed show hosted by Jazz FM at London’s Jazz Café. Judith has toured the world ever since its release.
It was recorded in New Orleans, where she now lives – the home of many of those jazz & blues artists who had so inspired her since childhood. She says, “When we came to New Orleans, I was like, ‘why do we not live here?’ It was one of the most creative places I'd ever been to in my life. I was drawn to this place where jazz was born. It felt like I was coming home.”
‘Come On and Get It’ also marked the first time Judith had stepped away from the piano for most of the tracks, finally giving herself the chance to fully embrace her performance as a singer face-to-face with her delighted audiences.
“The biggest surprise was getting to be the person I dreamt of being since I was a kid,” she says, beaming. “Standing up and being that front person, suddenly being able to be larger than life, and dressing the way I wanted. And the audience really loved it. The unexpected joy that came from that completely changed me.”
That transformation led her to release two more joyful albums, ‘Comes Alive’, recorded live at Marians Jazzroom, and ‘Judith Owen Swings Christmas’ – a New Orleans-infused jazz album featuring big band swing takes on festive classics, alongside her originals. “There is no thrill like singing in front of a big band,” she enthuses, recalling her mother’s love of the genre. “It is unutterably powerful, sexy and full of swagger.”
Following directly from ‘Come On and Get It’, Judith’s outstanding new album ‘Suit Yourself’ can only be described as the full Judith Owen experience, celebrating all of her strengths and everything that has brought her joy throughout her last three releases. It combines the joyous swagger of her wildly successful ‘Come On and Get It’, the hi octane sounds of her 2024 love letter to big band, ‘Judith Owen Swings Christmas’, the live power of ‘Comes Alive’, and her own emotionally intoxicating songwriting and arrangements. A beautiful blend of jazz, blues and big band it may be, but above all it shows off her inimitable sound that seamlessly unites all the tracks.
Whether solo at the piano, accompanied by her jazz sextet or her contemporary big band, Judith’s rich mellifluous voice seduces, and her interpretations thrill on songs like Aretha Franklin’s “Evil Gal Blues”, Etta James’s “Since I Fell For You.”
On the extraordinary artists like Etta James, and Aretha, she says, “If you step into the shoes of artists who are that remarkable, you have to bring something fresh, and you have to absolutely take ownership and unapologetically be yourself.”
A self-professed Nelson Riddle and Quincy “nut”, Judith effortlessly takes on the mantle of big band leader, “It just screams swagger.” says Judith. And with a glint in her eye, she adds, It’s why I reworked the
iconic Bobby Timmons composition-’Moanin’, originally performed by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
I delight in taking things that were historically so masculine, and turning them around to a woman's perspective, it takes balls to be a woman doing it."
Indeed her big band version of Evil Gal Blues & “Moanin”,for example, is a masterclass in front-woman fearlessness.
Her musical prowess is further shown off in the classic American musical Guys and Dolls number ‘If I Were a Bell’, which she rearranges into a Jobim bossa nova style that exudes a sultry but quiet sexiness with percussion by Pedro Segundo.
As for her self-penned tracks, they are Judith Owen classics that blend seamlessly with her interpretations. The Django Reinhardt-inspired “ To Your Door” is a love letter to her husband, the American actor and comedian Harry Shearer, twisting the cliché of the male rockstar on the road into a woman's perspective.
“It’s mostly male musicians that are away, and they mess about on the road. But this is me as a woman saying, ‘you have nothing to worry about ever.’ It's a woman's message that, ‘the more you give me the freedom, the more I want to come home.’ It takes a great man to be with a strong woman and be proud of her.”
There’s also a lot of mischievous marital wisdom in “That's Why I Love My Baby” another paean to Shearer, about loving someone for exactly who they are. Brilliant, irritating, wonderful, flawed, “not how I’d like them to be”, she laughs.
But it might be the impossibly infectious ‘Inside Out’, which she wrote with Jamison Ross (Grammy award winning artist and Snarky Puppy alum), that embodies the tone of the entire album, finding joy in the face of adversity. As she admits, “It speaks of my musical and personal evolution, of who I’ve finally allowed myself to become. It’s about finding happiness, hope and compassion in the hardest times, something New Orleans is very good at. It’s a city that knows that life is fragile so you better celebrate the day you have, and that’s why I called upon the fantastic Tonya Boyd-Cannon and her choir to guest on the track, and bring that celebratory joy.
The new album also offers “Today I Sing the Blues’, a duet with the piano prince of New Orleans - Davell Crawford on both Hammond B3 and piano.
as well as “Mind is On Vacation” with legendary guitarist Joe Bonamassa (B.B. King, Beth Hart, Eric Clapton)
And perhaps that’s why her deeply personal interpretation of ‘Blue Skies’ rings so true, from the point of view of an artist who knows all too well that music has been and will always be a light in the darkness. “It’s all about the power of music to help us all,” she says. And this is how Judith Owen became the fearless front woman she had always imagined herself to be, never again needing to close her eyes on stage.
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