Janel & Anthony

• Event Date: Friday, September 18, 2026
• Time: 7:30 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free

• Performance

Improvisers Exchange and Spurlock Museum Present:

• Janel and Anthony

Featuring:

• Janel Leppin – cello
• Anthony Pirog – electric guitar

Together and separately, both musicians have long been an important and active part of Washington D.C.’s new-music scene. Anthony Pirog, an omnivorous, multi-faceted guitarist who studied jazz at Berklee and has performed country, fingerstyle, rock and surf music and Janel Leppin, a conservatory trained cellist steeped in North Indian and Persian classical music, who also plays electric bass in rock bands, have created a lavishly detailed musical journey, by turns ravishing and harrowing. Janel and Anthony alternately charm and challenge, with music that draws from classical, experimental, jazz, rock and electronic traditions but that ultimately is simply theirs.

An Improvisers Exchange Workshop precedes the performance from 3:00p–5:00p in Krannert Center’s Orchestra Rehearsal Room located on production level two.

Janel and Anthony have releases on Cuneiform Records.(external link)

Improvisers Exchange programming is supported by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and University of Illinois School of Music.

Photo by Shervin Lainez, courtesy of Cuneiform Records