Suzie LeBlanc

Early life and education

Suzie LeBlanc was born into an Acadian family in Edmundston, New Brunswick. Her mother, Marie-Germaine Leblanc, was an operatic soprano and singing teacher. As a child LeBlanc played the piano and flute, and was a member of the youth choir Les Jeunes Chanteurs d'Acadie. In 1976 LeBlanc moved with her family to Montreal, where she was first exposed to baroque music at a concert of the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal and experienced what she later called "love at first sight" for the music. From 1979 to 1981 she studied harpsichord and voice at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent, with harpsichord as her major subject.

As a singer

LeBlanc specializes in the 17th and 18th century repertoire. She began singing professionally with the New World Consort of Vancouver. In a review of a 1987 New World Consort recital of early music in Spanish, French, English, and Italian, the New York Times music critic Bernard Holland described her voice as "a musically communicative, purely tuned soprano − and one that enunciated crisply in all four languages." Feeling the need to improve her vocal technique after three years of "education on stage", she went to study in Europe, where Anthony Rooley soon invited her to join his early music group The Consort of Musicke, replacing soprano Emma Kirkby for eight months. She later recorded two albums with the Consort of Musicke.

She has often worked with the American lutenist and music director Stephen Stubbs, recording numerous albums with his early music group Tragicomedia. She has sung and recorded with the Purcell Quartet, the Parley of Instruments, Red Byrd, Les Voix Humaines, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Musica Antiqua Köln, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and Les Violons du Roy, among others. LeBlanc frequently performs and records with countertenor Daniel Taylor.

Her opera roles include Poppea in L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Opéra de Montréal with Daniel Taylor, Clori in Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno, and Euridice in Monteverdi’s Orfeo. She was a soloist in Jonathan Miller's 2006 staging of Bach's St Matthew Passion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

LeBlanc performs and records music from periods and genres other than early music. Her 2008 recording of Messiaen songs won the Conseil Québecois de la musique's Opus award for best contemporary music recording. She has recorded two albums of Acadian folksongs, La mer jolie (2004) and Tout passe (2007). In 2014 she released La Veillée de Noël, an album of old French Christmas songs. The little-known noëls were taken from Rondes et chansons populaires illustrées, a volume published in Paris in the late nineteenth century and discovered by LeBlanc's cousin at the Collège St-Joseph in Memramcook, New Brunswick.

LeBlanc commissioned settings of several of Elizabeth Bishop's poems from four Canadian composers: Christos Hatzis, John Plant, Alasdair MacLean, and Emily Doolittle. The songs were first performed during the 2011 Elizabeth Bishop Centenary in Nova Scotia. LeBlanc used crowdfunding to finance the songs' recording. The resulting album, I am in need of music, in which LeBlanc is accompanied by a chamber orchestra conducted by Dinuk Wijeratne, contains settings of eleven Bishop poems. Released in 2013, it has been called "an eloquent testament to love, devotion and determination". The recording was a finalist for the 2014 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. It won the 2014 East Coast Music Award for best classical album.

Other activities

Suzie LeBlanc teaches baroque singing at the Université de Montréal. In 2000 she founded Le nouvel Opéra, of which she is co-artistic director. She was also the founder and first artistic director of the Académie Baroque de Montréal.

As an actress, LeBlanc played the leading female character in the feature film Lost Song, which won the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film in 2008.

LeBlanc was introduced to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop in 2007, when visiting Bishop's childhood home of Great Village, Nova Scotia. Fascinated by Bishop's life and work, LeBlanc collaborated with the Nova Scotian poet Sandra Barry to organize the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival in Nova Scotia in 2011. She is the honorary patron of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia.

Honours

LeBlanc has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees by Mount Allison University, Mount Saint Vincent University, the University of King's College, and the Université de Moncton. In 2010 the Québec Arts Council awarded her a Career Grant. In 2014 she was made a Member of the Order of Canada for "contributing to the development of early-period music and Acadian culture as a singer and teacher".

Discography