Custom Songwriting

Some moments want a song of their own. A milestone birthday where the gift is the music itself. A tribute to someone who shaped the person you are. A retirement party with a surprise piece written for the honoree and sung by a friend. An anniversary that has kept its shape through decades. These are all real commissions Jane has written.

The people who commission them almost never write music themselves. Often they are musicians of another kind — a pianist who has never composed, a singer who wants original material for her own voice, a music professor commissioning a song as a private gift for a friend. Sometimes they're music lovers with no training at all, who know only that a recording of something familiar is not enough for this particular occasion. What they share is clear taste and the instinct that the moment asks for something that has never existed before.

Jane writes the song. The process begins with a long conversation about the person or the moment the music is meant to honor, the small things, the phrases that repeat, the music they already love. If you bring lyrics, she composes to them. If you want to set a poem, by someone living, or by someone in the canon, she'll help you choose. If you have the story but not the words, she has writers she trusts.

From there, the song can travel as far as you'd like to take it. If you want it recorded, Jane assembles the team — vocalist, instrumentalists, engineer — scaled to your budget, and oversees the production through release-ready mastering. If you want it performed live, she'll prepare the parts and help find the players, or coach the singer you already have in mind. A commission is a song; a recording is a separate project with separate decisions. She'll walk you through both.

Jane writes in pop, singer-songwriter, art song, jazz, and classical vocal music. She'll work in whichever style serves the moment, or find something the moment needs that no existing style quite holds. No two commissions are alike, which is the whole point.