The New School for
Jazz and Contemporary Music

GRAMMY® nominee for her first album, The Janet Lawson Quintet, with Bill O’Connell, Ratzo B. Harris, Jimmy Madison and Roger Rosenberg, she has also performed with Duke Ellington, Tommy Flanagan, Clark Terry, Billy Hart, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins, David and Lida Baker, Bob Dorough, and numerous others.  Performances include jazz festivals and clubs throughout the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. Lawson is a co-founder of The New School Vocal Jazz Program and has created Vocal Jazz Programs in schools and music camps throughout Latvia, conducted Vocal Jazz Master Classes throughout the US, Canada, London, Paris, other European countries and Asia.  Lawson is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for composing and  co-writing with lyricist Diane Snow Austin, “JASS IS A LADY”, supported by ASCAP and produced by Playwrights Horizons in NY; the Rockefeller Foundation; and the NY and PA Councils on the Arts and ArtsLink.  She is listed in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and the All Music Guide to Jazz, included in Leslie Gourse’s Louis’ Children, and Scott Yanow’s The Jazz Singers.  The Japanese Record Label, CELESTE, has released a double CD of her previous recordings. Lawson’s forthcoming books include The Integrated Artist: Improvisation as a Way of Life and a soon-to-be-published children’s book and  accompanying CD about the history of jazz, Grandma Sage and her Magic Music Room, co-written with renowned composer and author, Carman Moore.  Lawson was nominated for the 2007 IAJE Jazz Education Hall of Fame Award.  She received a Collaborative Project Award with Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts, Craig Houser. Lawson presented, TWO AS ONE, a clinic with Ratzo B. Harris at JEN 2010.  featured artist in March 2011 Allegro Woman's History Month. Private Studies include Hall Overton, Warne March, Hal Galper.