Janna Badalian

Janna Badalian plays Triangle Town Center on Friday, October 16, at 2 PM. She's a Raleigh-based jazz singer and songwriter who writes and performs in both English and her native Russian.

Her background is a bit of a map. She grew up in a university town in Siberia in a family of Soviet scientists and started playing in local acoustic projects and jazz ensembles while working day jobs in Moscow. She moved to North Carolina in 2007 and began songwriting and performing at local jazz venues here. The training behind it runs from classical guitar at the Novosibirsk music college to jazz vocals at the Moscow Institute of Improvisational Music and classical singing at the Katherine Posner vocal studio in Raleigh.

That range shows up in her repertoire. She performs her own original songs in Russian and English, jazz and blues covers, Brazilian bossa-nova, and songs in French and Neapolitan. Every so often, she throws in opera arias that she accompanies herself on guitar. It's a broad reach for one set, and you'll hear the classical training and the jazz side sitting right next to each other.

It's a free show, so you can just drop in. It starts at 2 PM on Friday, October 16, at Triangle Town Center in Raleigh.