JAN PRESTON

BOOK

Jan is one of Australia’s most popular blues/jazz performers. Charming, entertaining, honest, skillful and unique, Jan has it all. Called “the Queen of Boogie Piano”, Jan’s rolling left hand piano boogie gets audiences moving, takes them away from their daily stresses, and from Europe to NZ to Australia leaves them uplifted. Did we mention Jan is a great singer and songwriter as well?!

She has won 2 Best Australian Female Blues Artist Awards and was the 2005 Sydney Blues Artist of the Year. Jan is a regular ABC and RNZ radio performer, and has sold out concerts from the tip of Australia to the very South of New Zealand in main centres and tiny regional towns.?!

In her own words Jan says “I was born in a very small town in a remote part of New Zealand where there was no entertainment so people had to make their own. My earliest memories were of singalongs at the piano to the boogie woogie and honky tonk rhythm, so even when I went on to study classical music, I still had the sounds of barrelhouse in my ears. Later I discovered Professor Longhair, Winifred Atwell, Albert Ammons, Fats Domino and others, and I am so grateful to all these wonderful pianists for creating a stylistic tradition I am delighted to pass on in my lifetime. In a world which is, at times, very sad, there is nothing so joyful and uplifting as the boogie woogie piano beat.”