Jan Randall (born July 26, 1952) is a Canadian composer, singer songwriter and professional musician. He has had an extensive career composing sound tracks, performing original songs, and improvising music for comedy theatre.
He currently performs regularly giving shows of his original songs as a solo act and teaches music history at the University of Victoria. He also releases original classical piano sheet music through his publishing company Vista Heights Music.
Singer-songwriter
His first solo concert was at Giuseppi's Pizza in January 1972, at the age of 19, in Edmonton, Alberta. Posters of many concerts he gave at folk clubs like the Hovel, Barricade Coffee House, Room at the Top are available to view online at the Edmonton Public library archive. Across Canada, he performed at the Regina Folk Festivalin 1976 and around Toronto and Montreal after joining Second City Theatre in the early 1980's. In 1981 he joined the funk band Etcetera in Tampa Florida after meeting the guitarist Michael Marth who was playing a Vegas style show in Deerhurst Ontario. On returning to Edmonton the following year, he performed as a sideman for many local bands, including Amos Garrett.
Good Fair World (2008) was his first solo recording project which was followed with a world promotional tour that included LA, Memphis, New York, London, Berlin and Rome. His latest release of original songs, Wait in Line (2020) is available through Apple Music, SoundCloud and Spotify.
Randall composed and performed over 60 original comedy songs for CBC Radio's The Irrelevant Show (2012-2017) featuring parodies in the styles of Joni Mitchell, Prince, Cher, Luciano Paverotti, Loreena McKennitt, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Barry White, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. Popular songs from this series include an "operetta" about texting, Pavarotti doing his taxes, and Joni Mitchell complaining about Boxing Day sales.
Composer
In 1971, Randall passed an audition to begin music studies at the University of Alberta, graduating in 1975 with a Bachelor of Music, majoring in theory and composition. His professors there included Violet Archer, Malcolm Forsyth, Isobel Ralston, and Alexandra Munn. In 1976 he received a scholarship to attend the Banff School of Fine Arts, followed by jazz studies at Macewan University and North Texas State University.
In January 2014, he performed a classical piano concert of his original solo works at the McDougall United Church that included his "Piano Sonata No. 1" and a collection of Impromptus. In 2016, Randall and Ina Dykstra started Vista Heights Music, a sheet music publishing company featuring their original piano solos. As of 2020, they have nine books out which they distribute nationally through Debra Wanless Music, and Long and McQuade.
Bands
His first professional band Manna was the coming together of three rival high school bands to play original roots based songs. The act was the first to be managed and recorded by Holger Petersen for Stony Plain Records first album "The Acme Sausage Company."(1970) Several months after graduation Manna joined a North American tour of songs from Jesus Christ Superstar that included performing two of their original songs with symphony orchestra. This included Cobo Hall with the Detroit Symphony for an estimated audience of 12000 people.
Since then he has performed as a sideman with Bo Diddley, Otis Rush, Amos Garrett, Gaye Delorme, Dave Babcock, Sha Na Na, Spencer Davis, Sam Lay (drummer for Paul Butterfield and Howlin' Wolf) and Gary U.S. Bonds.
Currently, Randall is fronting the blues band the Boogie Woogies in Victoria with Steve Dubin on bass and drummer Jon Miller.
Film scores and broadcast
In 1985, he built a recording studio, Randall's Recordings, specifically for film and television music production. The studio has garnered over 700 broadcast production credits. In 1998, he won a Rosie Award for Best Composer/Musical Score for the NFB production, Lost Over Burma, which featured narration by Christopher Plummer.
He composed music for many other documentaries for the NFB, a large body of educational programs for ACCESS, and music to underscore a decade of award-winning productions for Karvonen Films and the Discovery Channel.
In 2006, Randall began work as a radio host on CKUA radio with the Weekend Breakfast show which he produced until 2009.