Alumni Gazette

STORYTELLER: “Music is the magic on which messages travel,” says Burnett, noting that she tries to share her own journey with listeners. (Photo: John Keon)

Janinah Burnett ’02E (MM) was two when her Uncle Henry, a bass player, sat her down in a chair onstage during a show. A year or two later, she climbed into the lap of her father, legendary jazz drummer Carl Burnett, while he performed.

“I came to this planet a musician—a singer, specifically,” she says. “I know that I arrived here with the intention to do just that. And it happened that the universe supported me by placing me in a very supportive circumstance. Being around the music was home for me.”

The music and vocal performance major at the Eastman School of Music now is an accomplished performer in her own right.

Burnett, who studied classical and vocal jazz music at Spelman College, a historically Black liberal arts college for women in Atlanta, made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera and has sung for Margaret Thatcher and with Ray Charles. She has performed at the Tony Awards and at a private birthday celebration for Oprah Winfrey at the home of Maya Angelou.

In more than 25 cities around the world, Burnett has starred in operas that include Porgy and Bess, Don Pasquale, La Traviata, and Carmen.

And she has earned glowing reviews.

About her role as Lolo in Harry Lawrence Freeman’s Opera Voodoo, the New York Times wrote that Burnett “treated her potentially campy role with the care and affection you might give a long-lost family heirloom while lifting it from a dusty box at the back of the closet.”

Burnett, who lives in New York City, now stars as Carlotta Giudicelli and the Innkeeper’s Wife in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, where previously she starred as Mimí in Baz Luhrmann’s production of La Bohéme.

Meanwhile, she pursues creative musical projects on the side to challenge her artistry and heighten awareness of social justice.

In February 2021 she released her debut album, Love the Color of Your Butterfly (on her own label Clazz Records), named after a phrase her mother used when Burnett, growing up, wanted to be like someone else instead of following her own intuition.

Not wanting to be limited by genre or style, Burnett created her 13-track album with a mix of art songs by Black composers, oratorios, jazz, opera, spirituals, rhythm and blues, and show tunes.

“I wanted to embrace all the musical styles that I cross paths with in this musical journey of mine,” says Burnett, who coined the term “clazz” to describe the melding of the styles.

“Originally it was about classical and jazz coming together, but the musical field is so broad, and the roots are all connected somehow,” she explains of the term. “My goal with this album was to show that it’s all just storytelling. The storytelling is the link, and the music is the magic on which the messages travel.”

Burnett is also behind “I, Too Sing America: A Lament for the Fallen,” a musical tribute through rhyme, reason, song, and spoken word to those whose lives have been taken through violence in Charleston, South Carolina; Ferguson, Missouri; Flint, Michigan; and elsewhere.

“As artists,” she says, “we have a responsibility to translate the feelings of people into sound so that we can acknowledge what has happened and can heal.”

The firm foundation in languages and technical support in singing she received at Eastman are, for Burnett, an integral part of her reputation as an in-demand singing actor.

Of her teacher Carol Webber, now a professor emerita of voice, Burnett recalls, “The way she encouraged me was very loving yet distant. She gave me the space to grow. She told me I have wonderful high notes, and I sing nothing but high notes now—so many—so I’m always thinking of her.”

Now it’s Burnett’s turn to do the teaching.

She’s now working with two emerging professionals in her Midtown Manhattan vocal studio, La Janinah Voice Studio. (Adoring Italian fans call her “La Janinah.”)

“It has been a joy to reiterate what it means to be an artist, what it means to prepare yourself to sing and perform on stage,” she says.

Burnett says her greatest love is showcasing her own creations for new and diverse audiences, a conglomeration of listeners who take her back to the word “clazz.”

“It’s almost like a special looking glass through which to discover beautiful ways that the music is all connected,” she says, “and that we’re all connected.”

Flanigan is a Rochester-based freelance writer.