Janis Mercer is an American pianist/composer living in San Francisco. She was the founder and former artistic director of schwungvoll, a new music chamber ensemble, with whom she performed for several years. She performed Anthony Braxton's solo piano music in California, Illinois, and New York through lectures at colleges and in public concerts. She has a strong interest in the music of the Second Viennese School but also performs living composers and has commissioned solo works. Her compositions have been mostly for single instrument, chamber music and/or voice, and use serial techniques and structured improvisation, but now she is composing more electro-acoustic works. Some of her compositions feature social and leftist political views in their structuring. Ms. Mercer holds artist residencies at Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts (California), Ragdale (Illinois), and Centrum (Washington). Her current compositional projects involve new works for piano and tape, as well as the release of her first CD on Centaur Records.

Ms. Mercer has performed solo piano concerts of new music throughout the United States. As a result of her concert on the New Music Circle Series, her performance of Paul Rudy's Church Keys appears on the New Music Circle's Season Highlights Volume I: 2002-04 CD. Her recording of Brian Belét's Four Proportional Preludes appears on SCI's Chamber Works CD, available on Capstone Records. Her most recent chamber piece, Beloveds, is featured on einklang records. Her percussion solo, Air is published by Media Press. Daniel Adams featured the composition for his paper on drum set works, published in the American National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors Journal, Spring, 2004 No. 3.