Cut to - the challenging choice to leave a successful band and daily accolades for a boot-camp of sorts. She lived off the grid in the cloud forest in Costa Rica for 6 months and met a musical comrade who had made a similiar choice after mega-stardom - former Japan guitarist Robert Dean. The highlight show with him was in a tiny bar, during the rainy season playing just cajon, snare and hats to Paranoid Android. Family illness brought Jen and her wife to Seattle where she entered a new kind of boot camp. It was here that she furthered her formal education in audio engineering and production, session playing, arranging, teaching and coaching. After a year of interning with Seattle legend Martin Feveyear, she was asked to join Earwig Studio's owner Don Farwell as an assistant and engineer. Following her inspiration to design sound for games and films, she's recently received certification in game audio design and production from the Berklee College of Music.
13 years later, she moved to Colorado
for a summer that lasted for 9 years. She played percussion for several songwriters and was drummer for Gregory Alan Isakov in recording, performing and touring for 10 years. Her setup took many forms, from large old resonant Ludwigs to cajon and hand percussion in an exploration of texture and melody that drew on all of the subtle and epic music she had experienced. Jen created Recess - a trio with Jack Leahy on baritone guitar and James Han on piano and keys based on music-to-film live shows largely improvised.
Jen Gilleran was born and raised in New York.
She studied voice, tympani and violin at Sarah Lawrence College from a young age. She moved to the lower east side at 18 and emmersed herself in the avant-garde scene during one of the most thriving periods in NYC history. She studied conga and latin-jazz with Frankie Malabe and tabla with Misha Masud and Pandit Samir Chatterjee. Through it all, she attended countless concerts from the Vanguard to house concerts.