Janel Leppin

Independently, the musician-composers who make up Janel and Anthony — that’s cellist and vocalist Janel Leppin and guitarist Anthony Pirog — have led deeply fascinating creative lives.

Leppin has been a pillar of the Washington D.C. music scene as an acclaimed cellist for over twenty years. She composes at the helm of her widely celebrated Ensemble Volcanic Ash,recorded a solo cello album The Brink in 2023 and released riveting singer-songwriter records as Mellow Diamond. As a collaborator and multi-instrumentalist, she has contributed to an impossibly wide swath of internationally-known experimental and indie sounds, from the inquisitive new-music of Eyvind Kang and Oren Ambarchi to the haunting folksong of Marissa Nadler, to the dynamic psych-rock of Rose Windows and art-punk of PRIESTS. One of the finest guitarists of his generation, Anthony Pirog is a member of Impulse! and Dischord recording artists the Messthetics, featuring the rhythm section of post-hardcore legends Fugazi, as well as an acclaimed jazz and avant-garde improviser and an important torch-carrier for the legacy of D.C. guitar god Danny Gatton.

Together, however, these partners in life and music have reached rare heights of sonic invention and personal expression — creating original music with a clairvoyance that their other projects cannot approach. It’s an intimacy that goes back decades, to when they first encountered each other in high school, as “grunge-kid musicians,” per Anthony. The relationship deepened through their college years and into their careers as full-time professionals on the richly diverse D.C. scene. “When we write,” Janel says, “we’re pretty telepathic at this point, as many years as we’ve been playing and improvising together.” Adds Anthony, “We are on the same mission, 100% of the time, in all aspects of life.”