Jennifer Charles

Jennifer Charles (b. November 15, 1968, Washington, D.C.) is a singer and composer. Along with Oren Bloedow, she co-founded the New York band Elysian Fields.

Biography

While Charles was growing up, her mother was a singer in Washington clubs and her father had a radio show that played jazz songs. Charles studied theater; She appeared in plays and experimental theatre at places like The Studio and The Source.
Upon graduating from N.Y.U. (B.F.A. Tisch Sch of Arts), besides acting, she supported herself with a variety of jobs such as waitressing, working as an artists model, singing jazz and torch songs in a piano bar, and curating a performance/poetry series at the original Knitting Factory.
Elysian Fields were founded in 1995, and have released four full length records (five counting one produced by Steve Albini that was suppressed). They have also contributed to many compilation CDs including the first song on John Zorn's Serge Gainsbourg album. This song, their rendition of "Les Amours Perdues", also appeared in Lea Pool's film "Emporte Moi".
Besides co-leading Elysian Fields, Charles also works on other projects. She and Bloedow recorded La Mar Enfortuna featuring renditions of Sephardic and Ladino songs.
Charles also makes up one third of the band Lovage , along with Dan the Automator and Mike Patton; they recorded an album called "Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By" for which she co-wrote and sung most of the material, which became something of a cult album favorite. She has also worked with bands like Firewater, turning in notable performances on "The Circus" and "Mr. Cardiac" from 1996s Get Off The Cross, We Need the Wood for the Fire., Xian Hawkin's "Sybarite", the latest Foetus record, "Love", as well as appearing on several of John Zorn's records.
She has studied Classical Indian singing with teacher Gulamji.
Charles recorded in French with the French composer Jean-Louis Murat for the album A bird on a poire in 2004, which was nominated for a Victoires de la Musique award best pop album.
She had a guest spot on ex-Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna's solo project Tweaker. She sang and co-composed the track "Crude Sunlight", which appeared on the 2004 album "2am Wakeup Call". Charles also co-composed music with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heill (Run Lola Run) for the film Tangled. A version of Bob Dylan's Tangled up in Blue performed by Elysian Fields can be heard in the film's credits.
2006 saw her in the role of producer for the latest Oren Bloedow record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Charles
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