| Elana James |
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Elana James
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Birth name: |
Elana Jaime Fremerman |
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Born: |
October 21, 1970 |
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Origin: |
Kansas City, MO |
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Years active: |
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Labels: |
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Phoots comi...
James toured with Bob Dylan in 2005, the first female to be included in his touring band in over 30 years (James came to Dylan's attention when The Hot Club of Cowtown, her Western swing trio, opened for him and Willie Nelson during a joint tour of historic baseball parks in the Summer of 2004). She briefly joined Dylan's band in 2005 on a tour with Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, and Amos Lee, as the first dedicated female instrumentalist to play in Dylan's touring band since Scarlet Rivera in the early 1970s. In 2005 James released her debut CD, "Elana James" and formed a trio featuring Beau Sample (formerly of Cave Catt Sammy) on bass and Luke Hill, on guitar. She joined Dylan again in 2006 as his opening act on another historic ballparks tour also featuring Junior Brown and Jimmie Vaughan.
In 2008 The Hot Club of Cowtown, with James, guitarist Whit Smith and bassist Jake Erwin re-formed and has continued touring and recording. In 2008 the band released The Best of the Hot Club of Cowtown, followed by Wishful Thinking in 2009, and in 2011, a collection of Western swing songs made popular by legendary Texas bandleader Bob Wills, What Makes Bob Holler.
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James grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas and began playing Suzuki violin at age four. Her mother is a professional violinist who used to play in the Kansas City Symphony.
She has been a featured guest on A Prairie Home Companion, the Grand Ol’ Opry, the Women in Jazz series at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at festivals and concerts throughout the world, including the Glastonbury Festival in England, the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, Australia’s East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival, the Rochester Jazz Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage and the Cambridge Folk Festival. In 2004 she was inducted, with her Hot Club band mates, into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame.
James graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Comparative Religion from Barnard College, Columbia University, in New York while studying violin and viola at the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Lucie Robert and Karen Ritscher. She studied improvisation and swing fiddle with Marty Laster in New York City and, in India, studied Dhrupad, an early form of North Indian Classical music, with Pandit Vidhur Malik in Brindavan, India.
James is a former Managing Editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. In the early 1990s she worked as a horse packer and wrangler at the Home Ranch in Clark, Colorado and played fiddle in the ranch's cowboy band. James is an alumnus of the Meadowmount School of Music, the New York Youth Symphony, The Columbia University Chamber Music Program, the New York String Orchestra Seminar with Alexander Schneider and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France.
In 2008 The Hot Club of Cowtown, with James, guitarist Whit Smith and bassist Jake Erwin re-formed and has continued touring and recording. In 2008 the band released The Best of the Hot Club of Cowtown, followed by Wishful Thinking in 2009, and in 2011, a collection of Western swing songs made popular by legendary Texas bandleader Bob Wills, What Makes Bob Holler.
[edit] More
James grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas and began playing Suzuki violin at age four. Her mother is a professional violinist who used to play in the Kansas City Symphony.
She has been a featured guest on A Prairie Home Companion, the Grand Ol’ Opry, the Women in Jazz series at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at festivals and concerts throughout the world, including the Glastonbury Festival in England, the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, Australia’s East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival, the Rochester Jazz Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage and the Cambridge Folk Festival. In 2004 she was inducted, with her Hot Club band mates, into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame.
James graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Comparative Religion from Barnard College, Columbia University, in New York while studying violin and viola at the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Lucie Robert and Karen Ritscher. She studied improvisation and swing fiddle with Marty Laster in New York City and, in India, studied Dhrupad, an early form of North Indian Classical music, with Pandit Vidhur Malik in Brindavan, India.
James is a former Managing Editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. In the early 1990s she worked as a horse packer and wrangler at the Home Ranch in Clark, Colorado and played fiddle in the ranch's cowboy band. James is an alumnus of the Meadowmount School of Music, the New York Youth Symphony, The Columbia University Chamber Music Program, the New York String Orchestra Seminar with Alexander Schneider and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France.