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Westchester Weekly Desk
The New York Times
AT A CONCERT WITH
Michelle LeBlanc: Helping American History to Sing Its Song
By THOMAS STAUDTER
IF life is a cabaret, inevitably history is too.
That's why Michelle LeBlanc, a jazz vocalist and Putnam Valley resident, created a concert program three years ago titled ''Jazz: The American Story.'' It intertwines her performance of well-known songs with short anecdotes and reflections about how jazz developed in such times as Prohibition, the Great Depression and World War II.
She has taken her history-as-cabaret program to libraries, museums, places of worship and historical societies throughout the New York metropolitan region, and for the second consecutive year she has received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to present it at six places in Putnam County.
For the past several years she has fronted a quintet that includes Phil Forbes, a guitarist; Ed Xiques, a saxophonist; Kevin Callaghan, a bassist; and Gerry Fitzgerald, a drummer. They have just released their first CD, ''Now or Never.''
In a recent interview, Ms. LeBlanc talked about her concert program.
Q. How would you describe your program?
A. It presents jazz as sort of a parallel to the development of the United States, and while pulling together a lot of strains of American music I show how the times significantly influenced the writing of different songs themselves.
Q. What prompted you to put together ''Jazz: The American Story'' ?
A. When I first started singing professionally in the early 1990's I didn't say more than ''thank you'' after the song was over. Along the way, however, people in audiences would ask me why I'd chosen to perform certain songs and what various songs meant to me. I read a lot, more than I sit at my piano, and so when I started introducing songs all these anecdotes and ideas issued forth -- about rejection of Victorian mores in the 1920's, for example, and how the blues, with those bent notes, was first regarded as the ''devil's music,'' and so on. The music and the stories all fell together, it seemed.
Q. Do you pick the songs first and then fit them into historical contexts or start with the events and find the songs?
A. I go for the songs first -- how they strike me emotionally is why they would get picked or not. I have my repertory cataloged by decades, though, so when I started to design the show it was a matter of going through what I like and balancing the two sets I usually perform in terms of energy, mixing bebop numbers with ballads for a proper pacing. It's like working on a puzzle.
Q. Do you find that the audience relates to your work in ''Jazz: The American Story'' differently from your regular performances?
A. People really do respond to the history angle, you could say. I always talk to the local historians wherever I'm playing and try to include material they give me in the show. I presented the program in April at the Putnam Valley Historical Society, and one of the old-time residents shared with me stories about how there were numerous speak-easies in the area back in the 1920's and that people from neighboring towns would travel to them on their horse-driven sleighs during the winter. All in all, I find that people -- at least in my audiences -- are becoming more interested in history, especially that of their communities.
Q. What anecdote and corresponding song does the audience really pick up on?
A. The march on Washingtonin 1932 by the bonus army of World War I veterans and ''Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?'' I find audiences know the song but not the story behind it. The real challenge in what I do in this program is to keep the show entertaining without making it too depressing, which is why I've hesitated including ''Strange Fruit,'' a song about racial lynchings.
Q. What aspects of the 1990's could be incorporated into ''Jazz: The American Story''?
A. The whole idea of global connections seems to be most significant -- our country's position in the world. Robert Pinsky, our country's poet laureate, comments in one of his essays that we're still creating ourselves and the kind of people we are. We very well may be the greatest nation, but Pinsky questions whether we are indeed the greatest people.
Q. Are there any songs that you feel address our present history in the making?
A. Abbey Lincoln, the jazz singer, writes songs that are more socially conscious and depart from the usual themes of love gained, love lost. Last year I frequently sang her song ''Learning How to Listen,'' which compares the appreciation of music with the experience and savoring of life.
Ms. LeBlanc's next performance of ''Jazz: The American Story'' will be at Sycamore Park in Mahopac in Putnam County on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.
© 2000 The New York Times Company. May not be reproduced or transmitted without permission.
