J. Jasmine -

J. Jasmine was the avant-cabaret musical project of American singer, lyricist, and performance artist Jacqueline Humbert and pianist–composer David Rosenboom. In 1977, they self-released the album My New Music.

Members: Jacqueline Humbert (vocals), David Rosenboom (piano, violin)

Background

J. Jasmine emerged in Toronto in 1976 when vocalist and visual artist Jacqueline Humbert and composer–keyboardist David Rosenboom began writing original songs after several years of joint performance work at York University. Humbert, born in 1952, studied art at the University of Michigan under experimental filmmaker George Manupelli and followed Manupelli to York after his move to the Toronto faculty. She came from a performing family through mother Evelyn Marie Smith Humbert, a child vaudeville performer.

Composer–keyboardist David Rosenboom was born Sept. 9, 1947, in Fairfield, Iowa. He studied composition at Interlochen and the University of Illinois with Lejaren Hiller, Salvatore Martirano, Kenneth Gaburo, and Gordon Binkerd. In New York, Rosenboom performed at the Electric Circus and worked with composer Morton Subotnick. He then received a Rockefeller fellowship at the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo. Rosenboom joined the York University music faculty at the start of the seventies and established the Laboratory for Experimental Aesthetics in Toronto.

In 1974, Humbert met Rosenboom at York and entered experiments at his Laboratory for Experimental Aesthetics. The pair used brainwave signals to alter spoken material in Chilean Drought, an early joint performance work on contemporary events in Chile. She initiated a summer performance series in 1975 at a farmhouse near Maple, Ontario, where Rosenboom and Manupelli joined her in the performance collective Maple Sugar. The group presented music, theater, installations, and multimedia works at York University, A Space Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Music Gallery in Toronto.

Within Maple Sugar, Humbert formed Vi-Breasts with vocalists Diane Roblin and Ellen Band. Rosenboom accompanied the trio on Fender Rhodes under the stage name David Charles, while trumpeter–composer Michael Byron appeared as Rosy Dawn. Vi-Breasts recast R&B and Motown material through conceptual performance and improvisation. Humbert and Rosenboom then developed original songs from this collaboration, which became the basis of the J. Jasmine repertoire.

In March 1977, the duo performed J. Jasmine material at the 15th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Rosenboom took a York sabbatical that year and traveled with Humbert to Berkeley, where the pair stayed in a basement apartment at the home of electronic-instrument designer Donald Buchla. Humbert developed lyrics around personal relationships, sexuality, gender roles, and second-wave feminism while Rosenboom composed and arranged musical settings. The pair drew additional collaborators from the Bay Area experimental-music community, including singers Sam Ashley and David Behrman.

Ann Arbor Film Festival founder George Manupelli proposed an LP for distribution to entrants at the next festival. Humbert and Rosenboom prepared recording sessions at 1750 Arch Street in Berkeley and the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, with Bob Shumaker and Maggi Payne as recording engineers.

Discography: