Jane Williams

Singer Jane Williams formed her first band, a quintet, in 2019 and she is one half of the Omega Two duo with former Ray Davies guitarist Pete Mathison. She was born in Cardigan and grew up in Brecon. Jane joined her first jazz band at 18 and was with the National Youth Theatre of Wales for three years. In local theatre, she had played Hermia in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Pegeen Mike in Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. She travelled in Australia and New Zealand for two years in the mid-1990s before returning to the UK. After moving to Cardiff, she joined various bands, including the Keith Little Trio. She sang Blues, Motown and pop originals. In 2016, she performed on the Van Morrison album Roll with the Punches and the following year was head-hunted by ‘Wild’ Willy Barrett (John Otway’s musical partner) after he heard her singing at Brown’s Hotel in Laugharne (Dylan Thomas’s drinking hunt) and asked her to join his band, Willy Barrett’s Roaring Touring. She runs ukulele workshops and as her day job works for the agency Musicare, performing at nursing homes. In lockdown, she wrote a musical about how the care-home industry was ‘left out to dry’ in the pandemic.

Websites: www.janewilliamsmusic.com

www.facebook.com/omegatwoduo,

www.facebook.com/janewilliamsmusic

Women in Jazz