She’s Back

Preview: Jeanne Ouderkirk Returns to Jazz on Jay, with Her Quartet – July 10, 2025

She’s back…

Singer Jeanine Ouderkirk first played Jazz on Jay in 2020 and returned as a sub in 2023, stepping in for the ailing Perley Rousseau of Sonny & Perley.

Thursday, she leads her own band, singing her own favorite repertoire, including fresh tunes from a new album.

Ouderkirk’s quartet comprises two thirds of the Killdeer Trio: guitarist Wyatt Ambrose and bassist Evan Jagels; with drummer Matt Niedbalski in for Killdeer’s Sebastian Green.

 A prodigy who played piano and clarinet by 10, she played bass clarinet and baritone saxophone at 15 and was mainly a singer by 20; but she was a professional years earlier.

“I played bari(tone) sax, clarinet, and flute in a pit orchestra for a high school show when I was 16,” says the multi-skilled Ouderkirk. She played 12 performances of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” in Caffe Lena’s black-box theater, plus rehearsals, for $100. “It was such a thrill dragging all those instruments up the narrow stairs of this amazing old club.”

After working with band teacher Mark Beaubriand at Saratoga Springs High School, she studied bass clarinet and voice at Crane School of Music where she earned a BA in Music Business and MA in Music Education. She also took weeklong intensives with singers Bobby McFerrin and Rhiannon. No, not Rhiannon Giddens; Ouderkirk studied with the single-named Hawaiian singer who works with McFerrin.

She learns songs on paper first, choosing “Whatever I love, whatever speaks to me from the page.”

She says, “I really love how the form (of a piece) is the canvas and there’s beauty in the counterpoint of the melody and the bass.” She also values the rhythms and colors that emerge as she works on tunes.

Thursday, she plans to sing “Half Joni (Mitchell)  tunes and half standards from my new album, ‘Nightingale,’” a collaboration with pianist Tedd Firth.

The album grew from a musical theater gig with Firth, a Hudson Falls native who now works in New York as Michael Feinstein’s arranger and pianist. “I met him when I was hired to play bari(tone) sax in a big band behind the singer Tony DeSare,” says Ouderkirk, “at The Strand Theater in Hudson Falls.”

She and her band will improvise “a lot on the standards (from the album) and less on the Joni Mitchell collection.” Reconsidering, she says, “Well, I will accidentally improvise some of her melodies because they are so challenging and interesting to chase her phrasing.”

Busy as singer and player, Ouderkirk plays a busy schedule after Thursday’s Jazz on Jay concert:

July 11 and 25; and Aug. 8: Mittler’s Market, Saratoga Springs 5 p.m. 

July 12: Olde Bryan Inn, Saratoga Springs 6 p.m.

July 19: Adirondack Winery, Queensbury 4 p.m.

July 24: The Glen Eddy, Niskayuna 7 p.m.

July 26: The Bourbon Room, Glens Falls 9 p.m.

Aug. 8: Ophelia’s on Broadway, Albany 9 p.m.

Jazz on Jay free concerts are noon to 1:30 p.m. at Jay Square, the new park space opposite Schenectady City Hall. The rain site is Robb Alley at Proctors, 432 State St. Seating is provided indoors at Robb Alley, but patrons are invited to bring their own seating and refreshments to Jay Square.

Jazz on Jay is presented by the ElectriCity Arts and Entertainment District and sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts, a Schenectady County Legislature Arts & Culture Grant, Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corporation, The Schenectady Foundation, Price Chopper/Market 32, MVP Health Care, Schenectady County, Schenectady City Hall, and Proctors Collaborative. This blog is a series media sponsor.

Jazz on Jay continues Thursday, July 17 with the Art D’Echo Trio.