Suzie Leblanc

In her previous life as a professional Montreal singer and pianist, new mom Elisabeth (Suzie LeBlanc) strove for perfect harmony, something a squalling newborn rarely provides. When her equally demanding husband Pierre (Patrick Goyette) moves the family to the untamed country, Elisabeth's struggles with postpartum depression becomes a family crisis. Acadian filmmaker Rodrigue Jean (Full Blast) directs and writes with understated power and empathy; Lost Song could tear your heart out.

PH , Toronto Star , 2008

This taut and atmospheric film doesn't miss a beat. LeBlanc stars as Elisabeth, a new mother who can't quite cope with the move to an isolated cottage with her husband, Pierre (Goyette). The immense wilderness and her overbearing husband strain Elisabeth's calm, and she slowly unravels.
Directing with patience and precision, Jean adds tension by keeping mum about his characters' motives. There's no exposition, very little dialogue and a thin plot.
Instead, he relies on evocative cinematography that makes the trees shift from idyllic to foreboding, editing that delivers a jolt every tie someone so much as trips over a log and a strong performance by LeBlanc, whose every flicker of emotion is placed under a microscope for analysis.
The film had me leaning closer so as not to miss a single moment.

RS , Now Weekly , 2008

HANDEL MESSIAH - Connection to baroque style redeemeth TSO show Two of the vocal soloists - soprano Suzie LeBlanc and mezzo-soprano Laura Pudwell - are period performance specialists; because both cared more about storytelling than cranking out volume, they made an immediate, warm connection with the audience. The luminous LeBlanc gave us the magic of the evening: The wonderment with which she recounted the shepherds' nativity scene literally sent shivers down the spine. When LeBlanc shapes a long note, it's like a play of light and shade on a face in a baroque painting - it tells us something, and touches the heart.

Tamara Bernstein , The Globe and Mail , 2007

A GOLDEN, GLOWING MESSIAH Older Torontonians reminisce fondly of the days when Lois Marshall and Maureen Forrester sang Messiah together before Christmas. This year's pairing of soprano Suzie LeBlanc and mezzo Laura Pudwell – both Canadians making their TSO debuts, incidentally – is so magical that it deserves similar status. It is impossible to imagine a more intimate and touching rendition of the duet aria "He Shall Feed His Flock" than the one they delivered at Roy Thomson Hall yesterday afternoon.

John Terauds , Toronto Star , 2007

Suzie LeBlanc, the first soprano, is a famed performer of this kind of music and this instance certainly suggested that she deserves every bit of that: she has a beautiful voice, is utterly accurate, and has a wonderfully human delivery. I select her account of Ich will dir mein Herze schenken, with Mason and George again in the obbligato parts, as perhaps the showstopper of the day.

Jan Narveson , The Record , 2007

BAROQUE SPLENDOUR A FESTIVAL HIT The evening ended with Jephthe, perhaps the only Carissimi work to have anything like lasting fame. More dramatic, indeed more ambitious, than the other selections, Jephthe offers a renowned star turn for soprano, in this instance brilliantly executed by Suzie LeBlanc, and a exquisite concluding chorus.

David Gordon Duke , Vancouver Sun , 2008

Rameau’s Pygmalion: Music and Dance from the French Baroque Enchanting, melodious, perfectly-phrased performance can be taken for granted from the inimitable Suzie LeBlanc, the only performer required to both sing and dance. Her footwork was as precise and graceful as her singing.

Elizabeth Paterson , Review Vancouver , 2008

PYGMALION INSPIRED AND ENTERTAINS With a dream-team cast of early-music luminaries that included American-born tenor Lawrence Wiliford as Pygmalion and Montreal-based soprano Suzie LeBlanc as the Statue, this was a decidedly more sophisticated treatment of the legend than it ever received in the ’80s. Wiliford, who possesses an impossibly clear tone and lyrical sensitivity, was a revelation in the title role, to which he brought depth and humanity, while LeBlanc dazzled with her crystalline, otherworldly voice and playful demeanour.

Jessica Werb , Georgia Straight , 2008

PYGMALION COMES TOGETHER SPECTACULARLY In one of the high points of Festival Vancouver, a co-production with Early Music Vancouver joined local and Montreal musicians in a mounting that was almost unbelievably beautiful. Watching it, you imagined it being done in 1748 and could well see how it must have enchanted people, that is, if the first Pygmalion was anything like the amazing tenor, Lawrence Wiliford. This was a voice that owed its origins as if to something supernatural with a concluding aria dense with ornament and florid with long brilliant lines. It all came off spectacularly and Suzie LeBlanc was memorable as well, as the statue. It was charming the way she came to life through the grace of some stagecraft so subtle I didn't quite follow it, and the dancing, choreographed by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière was wonderful, as danced by Stéphanie Brochard, Nina Richmond-Goring and Lacoursière herself. And LeBlanc, pensively learning the steps, proved no mean dancer either at all the gavottes, minuetts, chaconnes and loures.

Lloyd Dykk , Vancouver Sun , 2008

Let's hope Suzie LeBlanc's visit to the Sharon Temple yesterday afternoon is a promising sign of summer riches to come. It's hard to imagine a better recital than what the Quebec soprano presented with Toronto pianist Robert Kortgaard at the first of four concerts hosted by Music at Sharon, part of the expanding list of out-of-town summer festivals within easy driving range of the GTA. The sensual and mystical – in every one of the multiple senses of those words – met as LeBlanc made vocal magic with a program of art songs that ranged from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) to Michel Conte (1932-2008), with a significant stop at the output of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). Messiaen's work explored the edges of our tonal universe using everyday musical means. His work is also imbued with a devout Christianity – more divine than proselytizing. In these works, as with everything else on a program containing well-known mélodies like Les chemins de l'amour, by Francis Poulenc, LeBlanc dove in with her whole being, fully inhabiting the songs in mood, spirit and musicality. Her clear, bell-like soprano positively rang in the wood-and-plaster temple's lively acoustics. Her impeccable phrasing rose and swelled with the arched ceiling. The elocution was as bright as the dappled sunlight that lights the interior. Even a relatively schlocky piece, like Conte's Évangéline, shone with earnest emotion thanks to LeBlanc's consummate honesty and Kortgaard's spot-on playing. The temple is a mix of secular and sacred – much the same as Messiaen's music. The Quaker-style spirit that inspired David Willson's Children of Peace in the mid-19th century was rooted in egalitarianism, charity and pacifism – and a love of music (although presumably a bit simpler and more foursquare than Claude Debussy or Messiaen's experiments). The ideal summer-festival program allows us to experience top-quality artistry, while also taking us out of the sunlight-blocking concert hall into a more pastoral setting. LeBlanc and the Sharon Temple fulfilled the ideal in spades.

John Terauds , The Toronto Star , 2008

Highlights in the 17th-century half were a grand and poignant aria from Carissimi's Jephte, sung to a fare-thee-well by LeBlanc... LeBlanc's rendition of Ombre pallide from Alcina was hair-raising in its impact, yet also arresting in its subtlety and the grace of its ornamentation. The house erupted. What a concert.

Ken Winters , The Globe and Mail , 2008