Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / Brown Abstract - Image Hosting
Janet Gabriel is a supreme singer/songwriter whose influences include Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Whitney Houston, Anita Baker and Toni Braxton. Janet has a soulful and ripe voice which is both versatile and full of emotion.Born in Hackney, London, to Nigerian parents, Janet has been singing and writing songs since the age of 12. In 1982, she moved to Nigeria for her secondary education. By the age of 16 she had sung backing vocals for Mandy Brown Ojugbana (who had previously released the hugely popular Afropop hit single Taxi Driver in the mid 80s, a remake of a highlife hit by Nigerian musician Bobby Benson). Later, whilst studying Pharmacy at the University of Ibadan, she pursued more avenues to express her creativity and started to perform at university gigs as well as becoming a dancer with the dance troupe Rockforce. After university, Janet lived in Lagos for some years where she worked as a session vocalist whenever the opportunity arose. Soon after she went on to win the Miss Nigeria 1993 pageant, tried her hands on TV presenting and even had a brief acting stint in Nigerias famous Nollywood film industry (Janet had a role on a popular national TV sitcom Fortunes). In 1993, she also became a member of Lagos-based lounge act Motivation that played a repertoire of music from the 70s to the 90s.In 1997, Janet returned to England and continued to experiment more with her song-writing and vocal technique. She performed with different bands over the years, did some session work and along the way worked with many producers such as Don V Louie (Ministry of Sound), Kevin Warren (Pure Silk Records), Stipo Androvic (Soho Electric), Francesco Giuffrida (Mediamix) and Shimm-1 (BluePrint Music, Birmingham). Janet has also performed internationally, with KUSSU Productions in Germany and alongside Raptile (a solo rap artist signed to BMG) at the Eastern European Music Convention 2005 in St. Petersburg, Russia.Collaborations with various producers including Laurence Hobbs (Blue Room Productions), Rueben Martin (Moonstone Productions) and John Robinson (Clique Productions) feature heavily on her brand-new album, The Fire Within. Also featured on this album are Neophonics, the Surrey-based band which Janet fronts. Neophonics is a breakaway of the covers band Phat Medallion. Since February 2005, Neophonics have been concentrating on performing only material by their front-woman Janet Gabriel who delivers smoking, high-energy performances that send out a balanced blend of real meaningful lyrics and dance-ability.Currently based in Berkshire, UK, Janet has thrilled audiences at venues such as the Jazz Café in Reading, POP and Café de Paris in London, the Wakefield festival (2005) and the Keller in Bracknell, to name a few. All this has given her the confidence and has prompted her to record her first solo album, The Fire Within, a beautiful combination of RnB, Soul, Pop and Funk, which is independently released through her own label Amethyst Music.The first single of the album, Heard It All Before, is a down-tempo track that shows off Janet Gabriels rich, soulful voice perfectly. Full of emotion, this track has got the potential to become a soul / RnB classic. Check out the full version of the video for "Heard It All Before" here
The slideshow below features images of Janet Gabriel at Tony Tetuila's album launch (Moonlighting, Central London, 13 October 2006), the Mr Nigeria 2006 event (The Coronet, South London, 6 October 2006), the All White Hip Hop World Party (The Establishment, North London, 24 August 2006) and The Rebirth show (The Coronet, South London, 22 September 2006).
Get Your Own! | View Slideshow