BOZEMAN DAILY CHRONICLE
January 24, 2003
by Scott McMillion

Amazing Jeni
Talented singer making sweet music.

Listen to Jeni Fleming sing about putting some joy in your heart. Listen to this song and know one simple thing: If this voice won't put joy in your heart, you're beyond help. You've got weak meat pumping thin blood to your tin ear.

Bozemanites connected to the type of music that encourages you to think-jazz and classical and spiritual-might have heard Jeni Fleming in a variety of venues over the past few years; brief gigs at the Robin Lounge, performances in local churches and homes or fronting the Glen Johnson Swing Band. Her voice is on 10 recordings, mostly buried in the background in Christian choruses, but now it's featured, front and center, out where it belongs, in a CD with her name and picture on the cover.

"The Jeni Fleming Acoustic Trio, The Trinity Tour," also includes her husband, Jake Fleming, on guitar and Chad Langford on stand up bass.

While there's a hymn on the CD, while much of it was recorded in a church and a seminary, this isn't church music.

Tunes run the gamut. There's the jazz classic "Black Coffee," and the way Fleming handles it will make you smell the predawn cigarettes, see them stubbed out in the bitter dregs of a 4 a.m. mug.

There's "Amazing Grace," though in an original arrangement that you've never heard before.

And there's "The Waters of March," the lighthearted, almost nonsensical song that talks about the joy that belongs in your heart.

Three of the songs were written by Bill Fleming, Jake's dad, and one, "If You Will Love Me," was written by Jake who accompanies his wife on the stirring ballad.

The Flemings, both 29, graduated from Montana State University's music school, as did Langford. The Flemings live in Bozeman, where they teach music lessons, and Langford lives in Portland, Ore., where he composes modern classical music.

The Flemings both grew up making music, but they came from vastly different approaches.

Jeni one of four daughters born to a Lutheran minister who plays classical cello, calls her lifetime of musical training "cognitive."

"You practice, practice, practice," she said. "Then you perform."

"They don't know haw to jam," Jake said of his in-laws.

But when his big family gets together, things are different.

Everybody grabs an instrument "and 10 hours later it's time for bed," is how Jeni described those reunions.

Their backgrounds blended soon after the couple met at MSU ("Once I heard her sing, we kind of became partners," Jake said.) and the result is the new disc. In addition to guitar, Jake does the arrangements and handles the details.

The opening song, "Invitation," gives a hint of delights to come. A throbbing bass, almost discordant, attracts the ear. Then, once your attention is grabbed, Jeni's voice takes over and rides the bass, like a nightingale on a barbwire fence.

Jeni studied piano at MSU, one of the five universities she attended at various times, and taught herself most the vocal techniques by listening to pop singers like Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder and Anita Baker.

Her current listening focuses on jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Diana Krall, but still, she grew up in the '80s so her concert act features a cover of a Cyndi Lauper tune.

Jake is one of those guys who can play anything, but his first love is the saxophone.

The trio is taking their show on the road, and will appear Saturday, Jan. 25, at Reynolds Recital Hall at MSU. But by summertime, they plan to be living in New York City, taking full advantage of Gotham's jazz scene, hoping to carve out a piece for themselves.

Jeni says she wants to emulate the early career of Diana Krall, who rose from the nightclubs to the hit charts.

But for now, there's at least one chance to see the trio live, in an intimate setting.

If you don't catch it now, you might never get another chance.