Rachelle Garniez

Rachelle Garniez (born March 7, 1965 ) is a multi-instrumentalist , singer-songwriter and performance artist from New York . She plays the accordion , claviola , piano and guitar . She also writes music, etc. a. for film, theater and dance choreography.

Rachelle Garniez (left) with Hazmat Modine 2014 at the world music festival Horizonte

Biography and artistic career

Her father was Bernard Garniez, professor of modern French literature at New York University. Garniez received no formal musical training. Instead, she was encouraged by her mother, Nancy Garniez , a classical pianist and music educator, to play music intuitively, experimentally and by ear. At the age of 17, she left New York for Europe, where she performed as a street musician with her guitar, mainly in Italy and southern Spain . On her return she swapped the guitar for the accordion to play on the streets and in the subway stations of New York and to test her talent for improvisation. Over the years she has performed with various musicians and bands, including Thomas Dolby , Rufus Wainwright, and the Marvin Sewell Group . Later she played as an accordionist, mainly with Hazmat Modine and the New York vaudeville artist collective The Citizens Band .

In 1997 she founded her own band The Fortunate Few , with which she recorded her first three albums in changing line-ups. Its members include a. guitarist Matt Munisteri , bassist David Hofstra and saxophonist and pianist Joe Ruddick. Munisteri and Hofstra are still her constant musical companions today.

In addition to appearances on her own behalf, Rachelle Garniez is also active in numerous projects in the New York artist and avant-garde scene.

In 2004, she and her mother Nancy wrote the songs for It's All Relative: Kinfolk, Tales and Trails in the dance performance series "Family Matters" at the New York Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) . She composed and played the music for the dance piece Scent (2005) by the choreographer Keely Garfield. In 2008 she and the experimental composer and performance artist Sxip Shirey brought Shadow Land to the stage, a surrealist music and sound performance in the Museum of Modern Art in honor of Salvador Dalí . Shadow Land was then performed in New York's Cornelia Street Café . In 2009 she composed the music for Taylor Mac's award-winning monumental theater epic The Lily's Revenge .

In 2014, accompanied by bassist David Hofstra, she took part in the European tour of the American Songbirds Festival , where she performed with the stylistically very different singer-songwriters Ashia & The Bison Rouge, Kyrie Kristmanson and Stephanie Nilles . When this touring project was repeated in 2015, this time with British Daisy Chapman instead of Nilles, under the title American Songbirds & Friends , jazz bassist Tim Lüntzel played at Garniez's side.

Musical style

Your musical influences are diverse. They range from jazz , rock , blues , latin , chanson to country . The New York Times describes their music as "romantic, rhapsodic and casually hilarious". If you add the - sometimes eccentric - phrasing of her singing as well as her occasionally weird and humorous habitus as an entertainer, comparisons with Tom Waits or Rickie Lee Jones are obvious. Typical of Garniez arrangements is a playful and often ironic undertone that could be described as a musical "wink".

In her lyrics, Rachelle Garniez tells small, sometimes bizarre stories in the tradition of singer-songwriters and the blues , sometimes melancholy, sometimes spiced with lots of humor, sometimes parodic. However, some ostensibly funny texts sometimes have a more serious background. The song Jean Claude Van Damme celebrates not only the muscular Belgian action star, but also openly Rachelle's own struggle with her diagnosed bipolar disorder : "It seems we share a similar chemical imbalance." She also deals with this topic in the songs Crazy Blood and Medicine Man .

Albums

Rachelle Garniez albums appeared until 2012 on her own label "Real Cool Records", which she named after the novel The Real Cool Killers (1959) by Chester Himes .

Serenade City

On her debut album (1997), which she arranged and produced with Joe Ruddick, Rachelle Garniez basically shows almost the entire range of styles that characterize her subsequent albums. However, the jazz components still dominate here, which is also reflected in the instrumentation: accordion, piano, drums , acoustic bass and saxophone dominate the soundscape. The feather-light “Serenade” at the beginning makes use of Latin American rhythms. “Spike Heel” and “Retrograde” are jazz blues songs in the style of Peggy Lee's “ Fever ” version, while “Broken Nose” is classic bar jazz. The bizarre story about the skeleton named "Mr. Jones “comes in the best chanson style .

Crazy Blood

The clearest tonal changes on Garniez's second album (2001) are the addition of electric guitar , electric bass and a brass section, which has been enlarged to include trumpet and trombone , which give the arrangements a new color. Overall, Crazy Blood , which Garniez produced almost entirely on his own, sounds more experimental than its predecessor. Perhaps not entirely by chance, “Marie”, the piece at the center of the album, with its psychedelic sound alienation sounds like a chanson under the influence of drugs. Especially in the second half of the album, the blues takes the dominant position ("Odette", "Swimming Pool Blue", "Crazy Blood" and especially "New Dog"). "Regular Joe" closes the album with Latin American sounds in the Chachacha style. Garniez also dares a little more vocally: in addition to sometimes weird phrasing (“Mister Lady”, “New Dog”), she sings in “Little Fish” partly in French and even uses yodelling sounds in “Regular Joe”.

Luckyday

Garniez's third album (2004) emancipates itself from the blues and jazz standards of earlier productions. The musical influences are still clear, but here rather set pieces that merge into increasingly independent arrangements and are therefore no longer so dominant. Overall, the compositions on Luckyday are therefore more difficult to classify stylistically. With “Medicine Man” the album also includes one of their classics, which, still in the ostensibly classic jazz-blues style, musically illustrates one of their health crises with shrill, distorted phrasing and arrangements. In “Pearls & Swine” she strongly reminds of compositions by Tom Waits with her croaking deep vocals and the fairground atmosphere .

Melusine Years

Melusine Years (2008) manages with a noticeably reduced instrumentation and was recorded entirely in trio together with Matt Munisteri and David Hofstra . The most important change is the complete absence of wind instruments . Garniez is continuing the emancipation from standards initiated at Luckyday . Impressive compositions are the bluegrass- inspired “Shoemaker's Children” or “Tourmaline” in waltz rhythm . With Red Red Nose she parodistically varies the love song (My Love Is Like A) Red, Red Rose (1794) by Robert Burns and rewrites it into a drinking ballad.

Sad-Dead-Alive-Happy

On her fifth album (2012) Garniez relies on economical arrangements and continues to approach classical singer-songwriting in her compositions . It sounds less eccentric without losing its distinct style. "Jean Claude Van Damme" is an idiosyncratic piano ballad: the lovingly ironic portrait of the action hero ("To be sure I'm impressed by your muscles / And I've got a lot of relatives in Brussels") is created through the description of the common bipolar Disruption in a different light. "My House Of Peace" was released as a single on Jack White 's Third Man Records label. "Lunasa" was already recorded by Karen Elson on her album The Ghost Who Walks (2010, Third Man Records) with the participation of Garniez ( acoustic guitar ).

Children scared

This album (2013) is a socially committed side project for which Debbie Harry was also won. Together with Palmyra Delran, Rachelle Garniez wrote rock and pop songs for children who deal with their emotional and social problems.

Who's counting

Garniez's sixth album (2015), this time produced by Dick Conette, brings out her idiosyncratic, blues, "jazz, folk and her own soul [s]" mix of styles. With Vanity's Curse and Long Way To Jerusalem there are also two pieces that are unusually elegiac for Garniez style. She plays the accordion, acoustic guitar and piano herself. Based on the interaction with her live partner and jazz bassist Tim Lüntzel, strings and wind instruments are occasionally used for atmospheric support in her arrangements. For the first time, in addition to the songs, there are also small musical interludes such as piano & bass , bells or harmonium . There is also a guest appearance by Hazmat Modine on the new recording of Little Fish . She also provided her classic Medicine Man with a new, more widely orchestrated arrangement, which uses a trumpet and tenor saxophone , swing jazz elements in the style of the 1940s as well as onomatopoeic accordion figures (e.g. an ambulance siren), which Garniez likes to use on stage . In Manhattan Iceland (accordion and vocals) and Vanity's Curse (guitar and vocals) is contrast to solo recordings.

Discography

Albums

Serenade City (1997, Real Cool Records 634479553622) with The Fortunate Few
Crazy Blood (2001, Real Cool Records 63447908282) with The Fortunate Few
Luckyday (2004, Real Cool Records / Old Cow Music OCM1002) with The Fortunate Few
Melusine Years (2008, Real Cool Records 837101423748)
Sad-Dead-Alive-Happy (2012, Real Cool Records 884501620611)
Kinder Angst (2013, Kinder Angst 884501611947) with Palmyra Delran
Who's Counting (2015, Jaro Medien 4327-2)

Compilations

Greetings From Dreamsville (2013, JARO 4315-2)
Various Artists: American Songbirds - Women Singer-Songwriters from the New World (2014, JARO 4318-2)
Various Artists: American Songbirds - Sing Me A Song (live) (2015, JARO 433-2)

Singles

My House Of Peace (2014, Third Man Records TMR004) 7 "vinyl

With other artists

Richard Barone: Clouds over Eden (1993, Line / DA Music)
Isle of Klezbos: Greetings from The Isle of Klezbos (2003, Rhythm Media)
Catherine Russell : Sentimental Streak (2008, Harmonia Mundi's World Village Label)
Catherine Russell: Inside This Heart Of Mine (2009, Harmonia Mundi's World Village Label)
Various Artists: The Garage Band Tribute To The Beatles (2009, Collectables)
Karen Elson: The Ghost Who Walks (2010, Third Man Records TMR030)
Matt Munisteri : The Lost Music of Willard Robison, Vol. 1: Still Runnin 'Round in the Wilderness (2012, Old Cow Music)
Hazmat Modine : Live (2014, JARO 4320-2)
Olivia Jean: Bathtub Love Killings (2014, Third Man Records TMR281)
Hazmat Modine : Extra-Deluxe-Supreme (2015, JARO 4326-2)
Rachelle Garniez & Erik Della Penna: An Evening in New York (2020, JARO 4352-2)