Grammy Award Winner JANIS IAN Performs This Saturday 4/20 at SOPAC

SAT 4/20 @ 8:00PM – JANIS IAN

**Post-Performance Interview Hosted by News 12 NJ’s John Bathke**

Where: South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC), 1 SOPAC Way, South Orange, NJ, 07079

Tickets: $25, $35.  To purchase, visit SOPACnow.org or call 973.313.ARTS.

Who are the great songwriters in America today? Not the most popular. Not the richest. Simply the greats.

Ask any student of the form, and Janis Ian will be counted among them. The writer of "Jesse," a song recorded by so many others that few remember Ian wrote it; "Stars," possibly the best song ever written about the life of a performer, recorded by artists as diverse as Mel Torme and Cher; and the seminal "At Seventeen", a song that brought her five Grammy nominations (the most any solo female artist had ever garnered) in 1975, and which is now reaching its third generation of listeners.

Ian is a formidable talent, a force of nature. Ella Fitzgerald called her "The best young singer in America." Chet Atkins said "Singer? You ought to hear that girl play guitar; she gives me a run for my money!" Reviewers have called her live performances "overwhelming to the spirit and soul," and "drenched with such passion, the audience feels they've been swept up in a hurricane." Not to mention her short stories, her songs for film and television…and oh, yes. She also runs a foundation, named for her mother, which works with various universities and colleges to supply scholarships for returning students; they’ve raised over $300,000 to date!

Born Janis Eddy Fink on 7th April 1951 to a Jewish family in New York City, she was primarily raised in New Jersey, initially on a farm, and attended East Orange High School and the New York City High School of Music & Art. Her parents, Victor (a music teacher) and Pearl, ran a summer camp in upstate New York, and, in that Cold War era, were frequently under government surveillance because of their left-wing politics. (Ian alluded to these years later in her song “God and the FBI”). Young Janis admired the work of folk pioneers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. At the age of twelve, Ian wrote her first song, “Hair of Spun Gold”, which was subsequently published in the folk publication Broadside and was later recorded for her debut album.

"Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)" was a song written in 1965 by Janis Ian. At that time, her East Orange neighborhood was predominantly populated by African-Americans and she was one of very few whites in her school.  The song is centered around the then-taboo subject of interracial romance. Ian was 13 years old when she was motivated to write the song and completed it when she was 14.

In 2008, Janis reached another pinnacle in her career, releasing her long-awaited book Society's Child: My Autobiography. The hardcover was released in North America by Tarcher/Penguin. This monumental story that traces Janis meteoric rise to fame in the 60s and beyond has already gotten stellar reviews; Oprah's O Magazine called it "Hugely readable" and recommended it as one of the summer's 27 "must-reads." Mojo Magazine gives it a four-star review, while Booklist raves it's "painfully candid, and hard to put down."

2009 saw the release of Society’s Child in paperback (Tarcher/Penguin) and a return to her roots when Janis and Sony jointly unveil The Essential Janis Ian timed to coincide with the release of the paperback in September. The double CD-set contains 31 tracks, and is the first "best of" Janis has ever released in North America. From start to finish, it unearths such gems as Ian's very first demo recording ("Hair of Spun Gold," sung into her father's tape recorder when she was thirteen years old), and features all the classics, completely re-mastered from the original sources, as well as never-before-heard bonus tracks.

Most recently, in 2013, she won a Grammy in the Spoken Word category for her autobiography "Society's Child". That marked her ninth nomination!