Midwest Tour--Minneapolis, St. Louis, Columbia

Photo by Howard Gitelson
"After keeping so much bottled up for so long, I feel very much like an ingenue--a virgin if you will-- rediscovering some things, discovering, touching and feeling other things for the first time. I want to say in my music, 'Look at this! Isn't it wonderful, or painful, or glorious, or sad, or funny? I've felt this way before, haven't you?' I want to say, 'Look at us. We're all scared as hell to feel this, but ain't this something?' "--Rene Marie

With the aplomb and voicings of a seasoned stage veteran, and the energy and delighted delivery of a still-rising star, singer Rene Marie returns to the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis October 4-5, then settles into Jazz at the Bistro in St. Louis through Saturday night (October 6-9) before closing the weekend on Sunday at the Blue Note in Columbia, MO.

Rene Marie has been compared to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson. Yet the story of her career is as much about the time she spent not singing as the time she has more recently spent in the public eye. She was exposed to music as a young child growing up in Roanoke, VA, her parents both teachers who surrounded their children with classical, bluegrass, calypso, and Mitch Miller ("everything but jazz," she says). Self taught ("I wanted to sound like myself, not somebody else"), she started out as an R& B singer around Roanoke, performing professionally from age 15, not discovering jazz until she saw the film, Lady Sings the Blues. But after marrying one of her bandmates at age 18 and becoming a mother at 20, she put her career on hold for the next two decades, although she continued listening to Ella and Sarah. Later, she says, "I realized I had a life, my own experiences, and something to say" and stopped listening to other voices, instead looking at creating her own. In 1996, with encouragement from her sons, she returned to performing, first at a Roanoke Holiday Inn, then in Richmond after leaving her husband and job at a bank, ultimately devoting full time to music. Since the release of a self-produced CD and now 4 recordings on MaxJazz, her career has reached legendary heights in only a few years.

Both critics and fans have piled on the accolades: The Academie du Jazz in France selected her second MaxJazz recording, Vertigo, as the Best International Jazz Vocal CD of 2002, beating out recordings from Joni Mitchell and Cassandra Wilson. Both JazzTimes (U.S.) and Jazz Review (U.K.) chose Vertigo as one of the best CDs of 2002, and DownBeat critics voted her one of their "Rising Star Vocalists" that year. Her first two CDs (including the aptly titled How Can I Keep From Singing? on MaxJazz) also topped the jazz charts and won AFIM (Association for Independent Music) Awards for Best Jazz & Cabaret Vocal. Her third MaxJazz release, Live At Jazz Standard, hit the top 20 on Billboard's jazz chart a month before its official release. Nearing 50, Marie has rjust eleased a fourth MaxJazz recording, Serene Renegade, which promises to carry her star to farther reaches of the galaxy, with 9 original tunes that paint the story of her own life as well as the lives of her family members.

Said Stuart Broomer (Amazon.com), Rene Marie has "command of all the traditional virtues, unfaltering pitch and articulation, subtle inflections of her sound, and a personal approach to reshaping melody." Audiences at the Dakota have known her talent for several years. Her most recent visit last fall featured tunes from Live At Jazz Standard and earlier recordings, most notably a fusion of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" with a scatted, acapella reading of Ravel's "Bolero, a sultry "Nature Boy," and a clever Marie original, "Paris on Ponce." Her affinity for strange musical mergers goes back to Vertigo where she made the gutsy decision to sing the White South anthem "Dixie" with the Billie Holiday signature tune, "Strange Fruit"--or maybe that is not so strange given Rene Marie's tendency to fuse powerful emotions into new ideas.

Said the Miami Herald, "Great art comes from taking chances. Jazz vocalist René Marie takes some doozies..." Take no chance and reserve your place at one of Rene Marie's upcoming performances.

Find Rene Marie and her touring band --Takana Miyamoto, piano; Herman Burney, bass; and Quentin Baxter, drums--this fall: At the Dakota in Minneapolis, October 4-5; at Jazz at the Bistro in St. Louis (October 6-9); at the Blue Note in Columbia, MO (October 10); at the Jazz Factory in Louisville (November 5-6); at Shaftman Hall in Roanoke (November 11), at the Cape May Jazz Festival (November 13), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland (November 19).