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RENÉ MARIE
November 1, 2023 @ 7:30 pm ~November 5, 2023 @ 11:00 pm EDT
$40 – $50
In a span of two decades, 11 recordings, and countless stage performances, vocalist René Marie has cemented her reputation as not only a singer but also a composer, arranger, theatrical performer and teacher. Guided and tempered by powerful life lessons and rooted in jazz traditions laid down by Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and other leading ladies of past generations, she borrows various elements of folk, R&B, classical, and country to create a captivating hybrid style. Her body of work is musical, but it’s more than just music. It’s an exploration of all corners of the human experience, an affirmation of the power of the human spirit.
While neither of her parents were formally trained musicians, radio and records of all kinds – blues, folk, bluegrass and classical – made up the soundtrack to her childhood. René had just one year of formal piano training at age nine, then another year of lessons at age 13. During her teenage years, she sang in a few R&B bands at musical functions in her community. She composed and sang her first piece with a band when she was 15.
But René put her musical aspirations aside to make room for the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood. She married a former bandmate when she was 18, and by the mid-1990s, she was the mother of two and working in a bank. When she was 41, her older son convinced her to start singing again, and she took a few tenuous steps into her local music scene, singing for tips one night a week in a hotel bar. It would be several months before she actually earned any real living as a singer.
René made a series of profound course corrections that steered her back toward a full-time career in music. René’s self-produced CD, Renaissance, was released in 1999 and soon after in 2000, she signed onto the MaxJazz label and recorded four more over the next four years.
Perhaps more than most artists, René understands music’s capacity to heal and inspire. Not only has she herself been the beneficiary of it, but she has made every effort along the way to extend those same benefits to others.
Prepaid Parking: $15.00