Jennifer Maidman (formerly Ian Maidman, born 24 January 1958) is a British musician, singer, producer, songwriter, actress[citation needed] and author who has collaborated extensively with many internationally well known groups and artists. Her work appears on hundreds of recordings from 1976 onwards and she has received numerous awards, including a platinum award from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for the album 'Hormonally Yours', on which she worked as part of the band Shakespears Sister. She was a core member of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra from 1984 until 2007.[1][2] She is best known as a bass guitarist but also sings and plays guitar, keyboards, drums, percussion, ukulele, cuatro and Chapman Stick. In June 2016, her website announced that she was working on a solo album in Woodstock, New York featuring amongst others, Jerry Marotta (ex Peter Gabriel), Annie Whitehead, and David Torn.[3] The album, entitled 'Dreamland' was released on 1 August 2017 and features Marotta, Torn and Whitehead, with guest contributions from Paul Brady and Robert Wyatt amongst others.
Since 2017, she has also been collaborating frequently with New York-based arts cooperative The Secret City.[4]
In 2021, she reunited with Joan Armatrading for a live stream concert at the Asylum Chapel in London. In 2022, the concert was broadcast in the UK by the BBC and released as a double album on CD and streaming services.[5]
Maidman's first release was L-L-Lazy Days in 1976, as a writer member of the group Red Hot, signed to Phillips/Phonogram, and produced by Mutt Lange.[6] In the late seventies Maidman also trained as a recording engineer, sometimes assisting John Burns at Escape Studios and notably recording and mixing Marc Bolan's 1976 hit single 'I Love to Boogie' at Decibel Studio,[7] a track later featured in the film 'Billy Elliot'.
Notable successes include the Shakespears Sister double platinum album Hormonally Yours,[18] (which spawned the single "Stay", number one in several countries and certified gold in the US), The Proclaimers' Letter from America (certified gold),[11] and producing Paul Brady's Back to the Centre (featuring Eric Clapton, and voted best Irish album of the year by the readers of Hot Press[19]) and the follow-up Primitive Dance (featuring Mark Knopfler). She co-wrote, arranged and recorded a number of songs with Boy George and Bobby Z (of Prince and the Revolution), which appeared on the albums Hi Hat and Tense Nervous Headache[20] and went on to work again with Z on the album Gobe by French artist Guesch Patti, on which she arranged and played all instruments.[21] Maidman has also written for Sam Brown, Eurovision entrants Bardo, and Murray Head.
She has written and worked extensively with her partner, the English trombonist Annie Whitehead and produced and played on her albums Naked, Home and The Gathering.[22] She produced two albums by the Irish singer songwriter Paul Brady, Back to the Centre and Primitive Dance (and appears on many others), produced and performed on tracks on Linda McCartney's solo album Wide Prairie,[23] and has also produced Murray Head, Dutch African band Pili Pili,[24] The Kick Horns,[25] Northern Lights, and Lund.[26]
Other notable appearances on record include When in Rome, Union Cafe and Concert Program with Penguin Cafe Orchestra, extensive contributions to Gerry Rafferty's sixth album North and South, Christie Hennessey's platinum selling album This is As Far As I Go, David Sylvian's Gone to Earth, Paul Brady's Full Moon, Oh What a World and Hooba Dooba, Sam Brown's Stop and April Moon albums, and many releases by Murray Head from 1984 until the present. Her distinctive fretless bass playing can be heard on a number of recordings, notably Taking the Veil and Silver Moon by David Sylvian, Heaven and Frustration by Joan Armatrading, The Awakening by Paul Brady, and Peril in Venice by Murray Head. Jennifer contributed guitar and accordion on Robert Wyatt's album Cuckooland, nominated for the 2004 Mercury Music prize.[27]
Maidman has performed throughout Europe, the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, appearing live with amongst others Joan Armatrading, Paul Brady, David Sylvian,[29] Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Murray Head, Bonnie Raitt, Terry Reid,[30] Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, Curtis Stigers, Boy George, Tony O'Malley and Kokomo. Major live performance tours include Joan Armatrading band's 'The Key', a six-month tour which visited major venues in the UK, US, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia,[31] and, following on from her contributions to the critically acclaimed album 'Gone to Earth', an 'eighty day world tour' entitled 'In Praise of Shamans' with David Sylvian, Mark Isham and David Torn.[32] Maidman's performance on multiple instruments can be heard throughout the definitive recording of the first incarnation of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, the album 'When in Rome', a recording of a live performance by the band at London's Royal Festival Hall.[33] She toured extensively with the band throughout the world and played a key role in their reunion/farewell concerts in 2007, when the band played three sold out nights at London's Union Chapel and received a five star review from the Guardian.[34]
Major television appearances include a South Bank Show documentary as a member of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra,[35] a six-part RTE series on Paul Brady,[36] and a BBC4 documentary on Robert Wyatt, in which Jennifer appeared alongside Robert on lead vocals, guitar and accordion.[37] She played drums with Salif Keita and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra in Kevin Godley's 'One World One Voice', a global musical chain letter featuring Sting, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and many other musicians from around the world. The project became a BBC TV special, a documentary and an album.[38] Jennifer provided music for the soundtrack to the film 'All the Little Animals' (1998), starring John Hurt and Christian Bale.[39]
Maidman sings lead vocal and plays guitar in SoupSongs, a project devoted to Robert Wyatt's music, put together by Wyatt and Annie Whitehead. Soupsongs have released a critically acclaimed live double album,[40] and performed at London's Royal Festival Hall,[41] Queen Elizabeth Hall,[42] at many other UK venues, and in France, Germany and Italy.[43] Writing in the Guardian, the music critic John Fordham praised the album and said that "Maidman catches the composer's sense of dishevelled dignity and casually poetic radicalism".[44]
Maidman also performs regularly with the Orchestra That Fell to Earth (five members of the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra, including Geoffrey Richardson),[45] plays regularly in France with Murray Head,[46] and with Kokomo,[47]Terry Reid[48] and Annie Whitehead.
She has also appeared at a number of performance poetry events with the beat poet Michael Horovitz,[49] and with Penny Rimbeau's Last Amendment, including a concert at the National Cite' de la Musique Museum's auditorium in Paris.[50] Jennifer also collaborated with James Tartaglia (Saxophonist and Professor of Philosophy at Keele University
[51]) on albums influenced by Tartaglia's philosophy work, 'Dark Metaphysic' (2008) [52] and 'Kooky Steps' (2014).
In 2020 Maidman's track 'Psycho Loco', a collaboration with lyricist Verna Gillis, won the Independent Music Award in the Funk Fusion category.
[53]
In November 2020 Maidman released a single 'All In', a vocal duet with Senegalese star Youssou N'Dour recorded during the covid lockdown. The Afropop website described the track as a "soaring anthem of solidarity".[54]
Maidman's first theatre appearances were with James Cooper's Renegades company in East London. She has subsequently appeared on stage in London, featuring in 'Strange Cargo', a devised piece directed by Jamie Beddard and Claire Hodgson for Diverse City, and on the New York stage in Chris Wells' "It Will All Work Out' at Dixon Place, Mannhatan, in 2017. In January 2019 Maidman appeared in Leah Coloff's musical theatre piece This Tree, which premiered at the Prototype Festival in New York City.[55]
Maidman is also a trained therapist and member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy [66] who has written on the subject of Humanistic Psychology for professional journals,[67][68] and contributed chapters to, and edited (with Dr Richard House and David Kalisch) "The Future of Humanistic Psychology", described by Professor Arthur Bohart of California State University as "a profoundly important book".[69]
On 21 August 2017 publisher Routledge released 'Humanistic Psychology: current trends and future prospects' in the US and UK. Maidman again contributed chapters and co-edited the book with Dr Richard House and David Kalisch.
According to an interview published in 2015, Maidman had gender reassignment around 2000, after a long period of transition, changing her first name to Jennifer.[70]
^Richard House, David Kalisch & Jennifer Maidman (2011). "New Departures for Self and Society". Self & Society. 39 (2): 6–16. doi:10.1080/03060497.2011.11084193.
