Beat a Go Go

"I was terrified of improvisation, with no notes on a page," she says. But Charlie helped her open up to the music in her heart. "He kept pushing me and pushing me," she says, "especially to sing. Over a period of 10 years, I just let myself go further and further into what I had to say on the cello. Then I just started playing and improvising on the cello by myself." Charlie had been touring as a solo singer-songwriter during the early 1980s, when they first got together. They formed a guitar-cello duo and hit the road, traveling the country in an Audi station wagon and playing mostly in folk clubs. Jami and Charlie joined forces with Seattle¹s Total Experience Gospel Choir to release an album, Canticles of Light, in 1984.

The sound of Rumors was influenced by the diverse range of music and musicians that band members listened to, including Peter Gabriel, the Cure, Robbie Robertson, Dead Can Dance, Youssou N'dour, and other artists from around the world. Although Charlie was the main songwriter, he and Jami co-wrote some of the band's songs, and the entire band collaborated on arrangements. Their music made impassioned statements about the times and social change.

The band was featured on two prime time TV shows, including ABC¹s "In a New Light", an early 1990s showcase of artists, musicians, and actors speaking out about the AIDS crisis. They also joined the Total Experience Gospel Choir in "Across the Lines", a televised performance filmed at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle.

Rumors briefly signed with Earthbeat! Records, a world music label, to release Burning Times in 1991. Prior to this, the band self-released Secret Language in 1986. They also collaborated with the Total Experience Gospel Choir to release Free South Africa (1987), an EP they recorded to raise money for anti-Apartheid work.

Cranking up the Cello

For Jami and her cello, there was a significant problem during Rumors' early years. Because the band's powerful music was so loud, Jami's acoustic cello could hardly be heard. But fortunately, in 1985 Jami met Eric Jensen, a Seattle-based instrument maker who had just created a prototype design for an electric cello. He approached Jami about his new invention, and for a while she played his prototype until he designed a custom-made five-string electric cello for her. The amazing sound and electronic features of his instrument helped Jami overcome many of the limitations of the acoustic cello, including feedback in live performance.

"The five-string has more range to go into the upper register, and it lends itself to melody," she says. For Jami, it opened up a whole new world of thinking in terms of texture rather than melody or countermelody. "When I play the acoustic after not having played it for a while, I love the sound. It is definitely an acoustic sound created by the shape of the instrument. It has a dynamic range. But I love the flexibility of the electric, and I love experimenting with it. It's less physical strain to play. The strings are more responsive."

Diving into Soundscapes

After Rumors of the Big Wave disbanded, Jami was free to explore her own musical territories. She says that her path to becoming a composer was a slow progression of listening to her inner voice. "I never studied composition," she says. "My music comes from a place of intuitive exploration of experience that wants to come through in music."

She made a big leap when she got a four-track cassette recorder and started recording textural sounds. "I love the experience of diving into musical soundscapes," she says. "It¹s a matter of deep listening and how I express it." When people began to hear some of Jami's soundscapes, she quickly became a sought-after composer. Choreographer Llory Wilson approached her about writing pieces for the Tallulah Dance Company. These compositions eventually became Jami's first solo album, Lush Mechanique, which she released independently in 1994.

Jami's commissioned works include "Tell It by Heart", which she wrote in 1998 for Climb against the Odds, a PBS documentary detailing an expedition to the top of Alaska's Mount Denali by breast cancer survivors. This piece also appears on Jami's Second Sight album, which was released in 1998. She scored the soundtrack for Chayes Productions' award-winning 1999 documentary Jews and Buddhism. Jami also worked with choreographer Sue Li-Jue in 1999 to compose music for Facing East Dance Collective in Berkeley, California. Over the years, she has received many requests to license music from her recordings for use in films.

When asked how to describe her music, Jami pauses for a long moment. "I still haven¹t figured it out," she says. "Certain adjectives come to mind like lush, textural soundscapes and contemporary instrumentals - I think of music as a way to take people on a journey."

A few of her influences include Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel, J.S. Bach, and world artists such as Angelique Kidjo and Ayub Ogada, among many others. "It has been so many years of listening to music and having it all percolate inside that I have lost track of who my influences are," she says. Jami notes that her classical training has significantly influenced her sound: "Classical music has influenced the way I listen and orchestrate pieces. It also has helped me with dynamics and textures. It taught me from an early age how to work in an ensemble."

Jami's recordings demonstrate that in addition to working with guest musicians, she can create an ensemble of her own cello and vocal sounds through overdubs. She eventually replaced the four-track with a Roland multitrack hard-disk recorder. "I use the Roland to record ideas and to enter into a dialogue with the cello," she says. "Then I re-record them in the studio."

Further technological innovations have given Jami even more freedom in both her compositions and her performances. She plugs her electric cello into a Digitech TSR 24S multiple-effects unit, which gives her a palette of sounds from which to create her trademark textures. According to the liner notes for Lush Mechanique, "Even when you don¹t think it¹s a cello, it probably is."

She also uses a Lexicon JamMan, which is a digital looping device that allows her to record a musical passage, and then loop it as an accompaniment while she simultaneously plays one or more additional cello or vocal parts. The JamMan gave her the ability to experiment with deeply layered pieces, especially in solo concerts. Recently, Jami switched to the Electrix Repeater, which has greater capacity and flexibility to create multiple layered loops in live performance.

However, even without the aid of technology, Jami coaxes the full spectrum of possible sounds out of her instrument. Through pizzicato plucks, high-pitched harmonics, and her mastery of melody lines, percussive rhythms, and flourishes, Jami's signature sounds all come from her fingers on the strings of a cello.

Working with Other Musicians

Jami has frequently collaborated with other musicians on recordings and in concerts. For seven years, she toured with Canadian singer-songwriter Ferron. Jami provided her voice, cello, and co-writing skills to some of the songs on Ferron's 1996 album Still Riot.

In addition, Jami frequently lends her voice and cello to jazz singer Rhiannon's Bowl Full of Sound project, which is an improvisational jazz ensemble. Rhiannon co-authored and sang with Jami on the song "In the Arms of the Mother" from Hidden Sky. The song was written in 2000 while they were performing together in the Balkans and witnessing women¹s stories about war and rebuilding.

In 2004, Nancy Wilson asked Jami to play cello on some of the songs for Heart's latest album, Jupiter Darling. Jami returned the favor by asking Nancy to play classical guitar on "Out of the Mist" from Hidden Sky.

Jami is also cellist, vocalist, and co-musical director of Praises for the World, a community performance work created by singer-songwriter Jennifer Berezen based on her album of the same name. Praises for the World weaves together music, dance, theater, and spoken word pieces from around the world performed by dancers, solo vocalists, a small choir, musicians, and speakers such as Alice Walker, Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem, the Dance Brigade, Linda Tillery, Patti Cathcart, and many others. "It is thrilling to enter into this musical and artistic experience with an audience and with so many talented artists," says Jami. There have been two performances so far with another scheduled in 2005.

Another frequent collaborator is poet Kim Rosen, who joins Jami to create poetry concerts. Jami improvises on the cello while Kim recites masterworks from poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Mevlana Rumi, and Emily Dickinson, among others. "A poetry concert is a place where there is a deep interaction between poetry and music that will hopefully shift something in the listener."

Combining her expertise as both cellist and nurse, Jami assisted Judith Redwing Keyssar, RN, in her "Being with Dying" workshop for caregivers, family members, and anyone else affected when people face life's final transition. "I wanted to use music to create an environment of safety and comfort for a subject that is difficult in our society," she says.

Playing with the Elephants

Perhaps Jami's most profound musical experience has been working with the Asian elephants that form the Thai Elephant Orchestra. These talented pachyderms are residents of the Elephant Conservation Center near Lampang, Thailand. The Center strives to preserve and protect endangered Asian elephants. Orchestra members have been trained by Richard Lair, the orchestra's conductor, to play musical instruments such as gongs, drums, cymbals, xylophones, and even harmonicas. Richard and composer/performer David Soldier led the elephants in creating two of their own recordings‹the self-titled Thai Elephant Orchestra in 2002 and Elephonic Rhapsodies in 2004.

In 2001, Jami was introduced to the Thai Elephant Orchestra when she was commissioned to score Panom, a film created by artist and filmmaker Galen Garwood. She traveled to Thailand and spent two days playing and recording with the elephants. She entered a new realm of improvisation when she began to have a musical dialogue with the world's largest land mammals. During these sessions, Jami experienced a deep spiritual connection that opened another door of innovation on her musical journey.

"I can't put words to it because it's so out of the realm of what you think is possible," Jami says. "All I keep thinking of is the word 'magic'. When you start to write music, you don't know where it comes from. There's this mystery that happens when I start to compose or improvise. You jump off the edge of a cliff, and when there's an elephant playing an instrument, that's the frame of reference. The elephant is looking at you with these eyes that are so big and profound." Once she started playing music for and with the elephants, Jami was filled with so much joy and hope that she realized she had to return to Thailand to make her own recording with them.

In 2002, Jami returned to the Elephant Conservation Center to record improvisations that became the inspiration and source material for Hidden Sky. Although she had reservations about captive elephants playing musical instruments as entertainment, she found that working with them in an atmosphere of respect‹as fellow musicians in a mutual creative process‹allayed some of her misgivings. A journal of the time Jami spent working with the elephants is published on her Web site. From her journals, she says, "I remembered the experience that I had with this group of elephants last February. I wanted to reconnect with them over a sound that might be familiar to them."

"A Common Music" from Hidden Sky is an instrumental duet between Jami and Phong, a four-year-old male elephant. Jami improvises on cello while Phong plays a beautiful, meditative passage on the renat, a Thai xylophone. The other elephants play percussion instruments on this track, as well as on "Sukhothai Rain", a rhythmic avant-garde piece anchored by the cello. All of Jami's compositions from the album convey a prayerful reverence for the elephants that inspired her. Hidden Sky also includes a video track that can be viewed using a computer¹s CD-ROM drive.

When asked how working with the elephants has affected her music, Jami says, "Often when I'm talking or playing onstage, I always have this awareness of their rhythm. It's also brought me more joy in my playing. I feel more clear about what I'm doing as an artist -- I feel this deep sense of purpose in what I'm doing, and I believe that's what I'm here for -- to share that beauty."