“I fell in love with [Andersen’s] story The Little Mermaid and was fascinated by the idea of a female character sacrificing and enduring intense pain to get what she wanted,” she says.

Leppin’s interpretation turned out to be a personal prophecy. Mellow Diamond went through endless release delays and hand-wringing by record labels. In the meantime, she suffered nerve damage in her elbow, limiting her ability to play her signature instrument, the cello.

During her recovery, she wrote and recorded using the mellotron — an electro-mechanical keyboard — saying the songs came “out of pure desperation to have solo material.” This brought about a second solo release, the Songs for Voice and Mellotron EP.

Leppin’s biggest step thus far came last January. Exasperated from years of trying to put out her music, the now-D.C.-based musician announced the launch of her own record label, Wedderburn Records.

“There were some lengthy talks with labels that didn’t exactly do me any favors,” says the Glover Park resident. “People talk about glass ceilings and honestly I think I had one hanging over me, too.”

That move has been followed by a gutsy decision: On March 25, Leppin will release Mellow Diamond and Songs for Voice and Mellotron at the same time. Both are under the project name Mellow Diamond.

“It is a huge relief for me,” she says. “The records are done and since I have my own label I don’t have to wait.”

The two projects demonstrate Leppin’s virtuosic understanding of timbre and space, but each has a distinct identity.

Mellow Diamond is lush and features more than a dozen instruments, all played by Leppin. The textures include cello, percussion, synthesizers, radio frequency noise, koto, pedal steel and her haunting vocals.

Songs for Voice and Mellotron, on the other hand, consists of only the two titular instruments. The tense restraint is a reminder of Leppin’s injury at the time. Leppin and Wedderburn Records will co-release the EP with New York label Fast Speaking Music.

Despite overcoming multiple challenges, Leppin confesses she was still hesitant about the simultaneous release. She got a final push of encouragement from a familiar name in D.C. music.

“I worried about it for a while and got mixed opinions, and then I called Ian MacKaye,” she says. “He thought releasing two records simultaneously was bold.”

Mellow Diamond plays the Songbyrd Music House March 24, with Pree and Roz and the Rice Cakes.

D.C. punk band Priests will headline a benefit show Friday at 411 New York Ave. NE, the location of the arts facility slated to become a boutique hotel. Also on the bill are experimental duo Janel and Anthony, synthesizer musician Adriana-Lucia Cotes and Ian Svenonius‘ solo project, Escape-ism.

The building on New York Avenue has operated under the name Union Arts since 2013, serving as a work and practice space for musicians and artists. Before that, it was used regularly for underground concerts and dance parties. But property taxes on the building became too high for the previous owners, and they sold the property last summer.

D.B. Lee Development, Inc. Construction and Brook Rose Development, LLC, purchased Union Arts in June 2015. They later announced plans to transform 411 New York Ave. NE into a high-end hotel with eight studios and other art spaces managed by the nonprofit CulturalDC. But up to 100 artists use the building on a rotating basis, according to supporters, and the new configuration is likely to push many of them out.

Supporters of Union Arts packed a zoning commission hearing Feb. 1. Many offered testimony about the scarcity of affordable arts space in D.C., which has rapidly gentrified in the last 15 years.

Janel Leppin of Janel and Anthony says the outpouring of support inspired her, and she decided to organize a show to bring attention to the situation.

“More than anything,” Leppin says, she wanted to “raise awareness for the need for spaces for artists in D.C.”

A flyer for Friday’s Union Arts benefit show

Leppin has performed at Union Arts numerous times. She says when choosing bands for the benefit concert, she picked acts who have been involved in the space in some way.

Priests fit that description. The band’s members have set up shows at Union Arts and two of them testified Feb. 1 on the importance of Union Arts to local music.

“It’s definitely a hub of music activity,” says Priests singer Katie Alice Greer in an interview. “It is a unique building right now in D.C. in certain ways. There aren’t a whole lot of other spaces left that are not private homes or businesses. … There’s not a lot of middle-ground spaces where people are actively making art and putting on shows for any band that they think is cool and interesting — in a way that’s not really driven by alcohol sales.”

But saving the building as it is now may not be feasible. According to Gail Harris, managing member of the LLC that sold Union Arts last year, the rent paid by artists did not cover the building’s property taxes. The new owners have asked the current tenants to vacate by Sept. 1. (Though at the hearing, D.B. Lee President Dennis Lee said that date may be flexible.)

CulturalDC says the new studios will accommodate “up to 20-plus artists” who can apply in an open call. Developers point out that musicians will also be considered for art spaces.

But current tenants are still challenging the redevelopment plans. Leppin says proceeds from Friday’s show will help the building’s artists with “whatever cost[s] they are faced with.” She later writes in an email that funds should go to help artists who are trying to find new studio space.

“We will raise the money to help Union Arts continue its work as an arts venue and basically a community center for the public — for as long as it can,” Leppin writes.

Desirée Venn Frederic, founder of vintage shop Nomad Yard Collectiv, which operates out of Union Arts, says that means lawyer’s fees. “In our current fight we acknowledge we need legal support and legal guidance,” she says.

The number of people who signed up to give public testimony Feb. 1 was so great that a second zoning commission hearing was scheduled for Feb. 23. Leppin says she hopes Friday’s show sparks enough interest to overwhelm that hearing, too.

The benefit concert for Union Arts takes place Feb. 19 at 411 New York Ave. NE. 8:30 p.m.

Top image: Protestors at a Feb. 1 zoning commission hearing on the planned redevelopment of Union Arts.

Leppin announced today that she’s starting an imprint called Wedderburn Records. The label’s first release will be a single from Janel and Anthony, the experimental folk duo she shares with her husband, guitarist Anthony Pirog.

The cellist says she derived the label’s name from a piece of land that has been in her family for more than a century, a wooded oasis in Vienna, Virginia, once called “Midgetville.”

“Basically, it’s a really magical place,” Leppin says. She grew up on the Wedderburn land, gathering with friends and playing music there. Once upon a time, she says, “it was all just virgin forest and hand-built cottages that my ancestors built.” (The “Midgetville” moniker comes from an old legend that little people lived on the land.) The property has been whittled down over time — an emotional process the Washington Post documented in 2004 — but it holds a place in Leppin’s heart. “Wedderburn” is also her middle name, she adds.

Wedderburn Records isn’t just a tribute to the family land, however. Leppin says both she and Pirog have a “huge backlog” of unreleased music, and she’d grown exhausted working with other labels on it. Facing red tape, creative compromises and disagreements over credits — “I still have to fight to make people think that I write my own music,” she says — Leppin decided she’d just release the material herself.

Inspiration also came from the late David Bowie. “He died with a huge amount of albums behind him,” Leppin says, “and I can’t even get anyone to agree on the terms of a contract for one album.”

After Leppin releases the Janel and Anthony single in the coming weeks, she expects to debut her first solo album on March 21, followed by recordings from a “legendary” artist. (She declines to identify the performer until details are finalized.)

Leppin isn’t sure what kinds of sounds her label will focus on, but her own work reveals a fascination with the mystical — similar to the special power she traces back to the Wedderburn land.

“I’m really just interested in the kind of people who can capture the magic. Whatever that means,” Leppin says. “Music you can’t quite put your finger on.”

Watch: Janel Leppin performs live for WAMU 88.5’s Bandwidth.fm

Now Leppin is channeling her talents into a solo project. Accompanied by a few friends, the musician recently stopped by Bandwidth’s offsite studio, the Wilderness Bureau, to play a few songs from the entrancing project, called Mellow Diamond.

Enjoy Mellow Diamond’s super-special performances of “In a Dream” (above) and “Paris to Beirut” (below).

Subscribe to Bandwidth’s channel on YouTube, and don’t miss our awesome playlist of every Bandwidth session to date.

Photos by Maggie Famiglietti

The music on “Clarity,” a recording that Leppin’s eight-piece Ensemble Volcanic Ash made at the 2013 Sonic Circuits Festival, is as nebulous in category as the duo’s: elements of jazz, electronica, ambient, avant-garde and chamber classical music (or at least chamber instruments, like harp and bassoon) all interact within the mix.

If none of these musical strands quite defines the ensemble’s sound on “Clarity,” jazz comes the closest — between Leppin’s stark rhythmic figure and Sarah Hughes’ dark and mysterious alto sax solo, the jazz feeling is unmistakable. Perhaps that’s what landed Ensemble Volcanic Ash a prime spot in the lineup of 2015’s Washington Women in Jazz Festival, taking place throughout the month of March.

Watch Janel Leppin perform live with Marissa Nadler at Bandwidth’s Wilderness Bureau.

Ensemble Volcanic Ash performs tonight at 8 p.m. at Union Arts.

Check out their beautiful performance of “Dead City Emily” above, and “1923,” both from Nadler’s latest album, July available now from Sacred Bones.