PHOEBE LEGERE is a TRANSMEDIA ARTIST. She uses many different forms of media: film, music, installation, electronics, paint, circuits, invented instruments, traditional instruments, performance art, poetry, costumes and movement.
Her hybrid artform explores the reciprocal relationships between disciplines in an interaction of location, science, music, painting, television and gender. The New York Times noted that Legere "plays the piano with enormous authority in a style that encompasses Chopin, blues, ragtime, bebop and beyond, and she brings to her vocal delivery a four and a half octave range, and an extraordinary palette of tonal color and meticulous phrasing." Interview Magazine called her "a genius." Billboard Magazine raved, "She is the female Frank Zappa!." Where Magazine called her a "brilliant songwriter." Variety said, "Phoebe Legere is a superb singer." But Legere is both an artist and a composer: she often frames music in layers of visual meaning.Phoebe Legere's parents were both visual artists. Her grandparents were all musicians. Phoebe started playing the piano at age 3. She started oil painting at age 5. Legere composed her first song, "Grasshopper Willy" at age 6. PHOEBE LEGERE is a dynamic performer on piano, accordion, Native American flute, and synthesizer, with a four and half octave vocal range. She has a highly creative approach to mixing jazz, classical, rock and Native American music.
Legere was still a teenager when she became the resident composer for the Wooster Group which included Spaulding Grey and Willem Defoe. She then went on to study with John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Legere graduated from Vassar College, studied composition at the Juilliard School, studied piano at the New England Conservatory, attended NYU Graduate School of Music Composition. She was signed to Epic Records, had her Carnegie Hall debut and opened for David Bowie on his National Tour in 1991. She led highly influential downtown rock bands, from Monad, to Ultra Monad, To Blond Fox, to the 4 Nurses of the Apocalypse.
During the past decade, Legere has dedicated her creative energy to adventurous, genre bending serious music composition. In 2001 she received a NYSCA grant to write"The Queen of New England", an experimental multimedia opera about the Massachusetts Native American Holocaust. She presented a concert reading at Roulette. Her "Children of the Dawn" CD features 10,000 year old traditional medicine chants. Children of the Dawn is a collaboration with Little Hawk, a Micmac elder. Her musical,"Hello Mrs. President", about the first African American woman president of the United States, was presented at Theater of the New City in 2004.
Legere was Artist in Residence at the School of Visual Arts Computer Art MFA department in 2003 and at the University of Victoria Graduate School of Engineering and Music in 2004. Legere collaborated with the Morgan Powell and the Tone Road Ramblers, a collective composing and music ensemble. "The Waterclown", about the formative movements of fluids, was performed with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2000. Legere has also collaborated with Eric Mandat on "Dark Energy" (2004), an astrophysics oratorio.
The texts for these long form musical works are poems written by Legere. Legere also collaborated with master trombonist Jim Staley. Their CD Blind Pursuits and Blue Curtain are available on Einstein Records.
"The Common Root of All Organisms" is Legere's epic poem about the parallels between Darwinian creation theories and Penobscot Abenaki Creation Myths. That CD is out now on Einstein Records.
Legere developed an assistive device for disabled children called the Rap Shoes. She then incorporated her invention into her live art performances. Her Sneakers of Samothrace 4.0, a wearable computer for music and art improvisation, were presented at a lecture/performance at IRCAM's Resonances Aux Festival in Paris in 2004 and at STEIM electronic music foundation in Amsterdam, Holland in 2006. ADIDAS SALOMON financed a second pair of Legere's Rap Shoes. The sneakers can be seen and heard on YOUTUBE and in an upcoming Roulette TV show.
In 2007 her visual music work, Chromatic Wave Cantata was featured in the SVA Digital Salon. In 2007 Legere had a solo show called "A Few Words From My Intestine" about Veganism, Raw Food, and the ecology of the human digestive tract. In 2008 Roulette Intermedium will release a Live DVD concert by Legere called "The Imaginary Opera."
Legere has released seven CDs of original music, and has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, PBSs City Arts, and Charlie Rose. Legere is head writer and host for Roulette TV, a NYC show about experimental art and music. She records for Einstein Records, a label known for experimental and adventurous music.
Legere occasionally takes jobs in movies and television shows to support her highly original artistic projects. Most recently she was seen on Nickelodeon in the comic children's show, The Naked Brothers Band." Legere has a new CD single on Mercury Records called "Ultra Romantic Parallel Universe" which is a collaboration with Leo Abrahams. The album is called Unrest Cure.
Presentation
April 13, 2010 - The Ooh La La Coq Tail
Phoebe Legere
Aaron WeinsteinJohn Burr
Elvis Sinatra
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