Suzie LeBlancCM (born 27 October 1961) is a Canadiansoprano and early music specialist. She taught at McGill University from 2016 to 2020 and became the Artistic and Executive Director of Early Music Vancouver in 2021. She was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2014 for her contributions to music and Acadian culture.
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.[1] 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.[2] From 1979 to 1981 she studied harpsichord and voice at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent, with harpsichord as her major subject.
Career
As a singer
LeBlanc specializes in the 17th and 18th century repertoire. She began singing professionally with the New World Consort of Vancouver.[3] 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."[4] 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.[2] She later recorded two albums with the Consort of Musicke.
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.[6] 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.[7][8]
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.[9] 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".[10] The recording was a finalist for the 2014 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award.[11] It won the 2014 East Coast Music Award for best classical album.[12] LeBlanc currently teaches at McGill University.[13]
Other activities
In 2000 she founded Le nouvel Opéra, which is now directed by Rona Nadler.
LeBlanc was introduced to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop in 2007, when visiting Bishop's childhood home of Great Village, Nova Scotia.[14] 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.[12]
She was appointed Artistic and Executive Director of Early Music Vancouver in 2021.[15]
