Arts & Lectures
2005-2006 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

August 16, 2005

Brilliant jazz vocalist Madeleine Peyroux
performs with her band at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

Captivating Madeleine Peyroux, hailed by the Christian Science Monitor as “soulful and inviting, with a voice for the ages,” will perform with her band on Tuesday, September 20 at 8 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. This concert will be the first performance in UCSB Arts & Lectures 2005-2006 season. Peyroux, who draws rave comparisons to Billie Holiday, weaves strands of acoustic blues, jazz, torch songs, French chanson and pop into a classic yet thoroughly up-to-date fabric. Peyroux’s second CD Careless Love burned up the Billboard jazz charts, landing on numerous Best of 2004 lists. Her smoky, luminous voice is at home with her own moving compositions and tunes by artists like Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith and Josephine Baker. After her recent Greek Theatre concert, critic Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Peyroux’s approach is a warm, endearing mix of genres and eras that makes tunes more than half a century old sound modern and injects more contemporary material with a timeless vintage feel.”

When she burst onto the recording scene in 1996 with her debut album Dreamland, Madeleine Peyroux was greeted with a torrent of gushing reviews. Most raved about her smoke-and-whiskey vocals, often comparing her to Billie Holiday. Others wondered how someone so young could perform classic songs by Holiday, Bessie Smith and Patsy Cline so convincingly as to make them sound like her own. Time magazine pronounced the groundbreaking Dreamland “the most exciting, involving vocal performance by a new singer this year.”

Peyroux, a 22-year-old American who had been living in Paris as a street musician, suddenly found herself on the fast track to fame. Appearances at Lilith Fair and jazz festivals and opening tours for Sarah McLachlan and Cesaria Evora followed, while Dreamland’s sales reached an impressive 200,000 copies worldwide. “It was great,” recalls Peyroux. “I got to perform with fantastic musicians. I got to see Nina Simone live. I could’ve kept running with it, but instead I stepped back and took a breather.”

Eight years passed between the release of Dreamland and that of Careless Love. Waiting that long to release her sophomore album was admittedly not a typical career move, but then Peyroux is not a typical artist. One needs only to listen to Careless Love to understand this. Produced by Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin), the album features songs as old as W. C. Handy’s bluesy title track, popularized by Bessie Smith in the late 1920s, and others as recent as Elliott Smith’s folky “Between the Bars.” Peyroux also covers material as diverse as Hank Williams’ “Weary Blues” and Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” With Careless Love, Peyroux once again proves herself to be an original interpreter and an open receptor to songs from earlier eras—an artist who channels vintage jazz and blues with unerring accuracy. “I feel very lucky to be part of a tradition of songwriting that stands the test of time,” says Peyroux.

Born in Georgia, Peyroux grew up in Paris and New York. Very quickly, she got hooked on French culture and began singing with groups of talented street musicians in the Latin Quarter, including the Riverboat Shufflers and The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, with whom she toured Europe. Several years later, while visiting New York, she was spotted performing in a club, by an Atlantic Records rep Yves Beauvais, who eventually signed her and co-produced Dreamland.

In addition to Madeleine Peyroux on vocals and rhythm guitar, her band will include Sam Yahel on Hammond B3 and piano, Matt Penman on bass and Scott Amendola on drums.

Madeleine Peyroux is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by the Santa Barbara News-Press and KCLU Public Radio. Arts & Lectures’ Jazz Series, of which this concert is a part, is sponsored by the Warren Family in honor of James Raney Warren. The private, post-concert reception for Producers Circle members is generously hosted by Merrill Lynch. Concert tickets are $40 for the general public and $18 for UCSB students who must show valid ID at ticket purchase and the evening of the show.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.

©2005 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara