Suzie Leblanc

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

Quebec soprano divine choice for temple concert
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

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

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

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

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

«Sopranos Mercer and LeBlanc were nicely matched, evident from the wonderfully extravagant cadence of their opening duet. (...) [LeBlanc's] voice is flexible and pearly, with a voluptuous undertone, and she is liberal with nuance.»

Elissa Poole , The Globe and Mail , 2009

«Among the standouts were the incredibly agile voices of Daniels and LeBlanc. (...) and LeBlanc’s plaint, “O Let Me Weep,” had almost the power of “Dido’s Lament” from Dido and Aeneas.»

Lloyd Dykk , The Georgia Straight , 2009

«Though the complement of eight singers created a strong ensemble and was used with continuously lovely effect in choruses (...). Sopranos Shannon Mercer and Suzie LeBlanc and tenors Charles Daniels and Colin Balzer got the lion’s share of the good bits. (...)Few moments were more magical than LeBlanc’s extended second act personification of Night, sung in a whisper and wonderfully telling.»

David Gordon Duke , The Vancouver Sun , 2009

Baroque violinist/conductor Jeanne Lamon always programs imaginatively. Her taste in baroque repertoire is impeccable. And her programming reflects the idealism of a meticulous artist who is also an educator. For Symphony Nova Scotia’s first Baroque Series concert of the season in St. Andrew’s United Church on the first day of November, with kaleidoscopic autumn light glowing through the stained glass windows all round, Lamon brought along Suzie LeBlanc, a soprano from New Brunswick’s North Shore with an incomparable, stained glass voice. LeBlanc sang Bach’s Wedding Cantata at the end of a set which began with a Handel Concerto Grosso (Op. 3, No. 3) and included a Vivaldi concerto for strings. In the second half, she came into her own with two arias mixed into the Les Boreades Suite of Jean Philippe Rameau. Les Boreades Suite is named after Rameau’s last of some two dozen operas, rehearsed in 1763, the SNS program book told us, but never performed except in concert excerpts, until 1982. The Suite included two contrasted soprano arias from other operas: Triste apprets from Castor et Pollux, and Du pouvoir de l’amour from Pygmalion. For the first, LeBlanc wore a simple black shawl over her concert dress; for the second a red shawl, reflecting the mood of each aria. Lamon compared Rameau not to any other baroque composers but to other French composers, such as Berlioz and Ravel. The music, with a colourful energy and a strikingly different way of phrasing whose echoes we recognize in Acadian and French folk songs and fiddle music, proved a brilliant choice to set off the radiant sparkle and purity of LeBlanc’s marvellous voice. It is a ravishingly beautiful voice. Effortlessly, LeBlanc coaxes tones of silvered gossamer out of stillness, with mesmerizing effect. Her face and body language is animated by the same impulses that give vibrant, radiant life to her interpretation of these arias. Rameau’s music for the Suite consisted mainly of dances, each with an individual character that Lamon and the orchestra projected with a wonderful directness and alertly vivid energy. In Air pour les Saisons et les Zephirs, two piccolos played with a sweetness beyond that of the descant recorders for which the music was most likely written. They were a perfect foil for LeBlanc, though she did not sing that particular music. But the sound of her voice still lingered in the memory as we listened. Lamon brings a vigour, lightness and athleticism to Handel. The tempos are fiery and the adagios rich with sentiment (which is to be distinguished from sentimentality). The Vivaldi Concerto for Strings substituted for the planned bassoon concerto. Its more fluent, feminine grace reflected the sunny south rather than Handel’s more stormy northern mood and energy. The Bach Wedding Cantata is a happy piece. Oboist Suzanne Lemieux joined LeBlanc at the front of the orchestra to play oboe obbligato parts with her usual melting sound and instinctively, profoundly musical phrasing. Lamon, the founding director and longtime leader of Toronto’s Tafelmusik orchestra, paid a compliment to Symphony Nova Scotia in a short platform note before the Rameau. The SNS players, she said, always accepted to work on unfamiliar baroque music (such as the Rameau, for example). "There are not many orchestras who accept this, and who do it so well," she added.

Stephen Pendersen , The Chronicle Herald , 2009

King Arthur
English playwright John Dryden (1631-1700) and composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) were a dream team in fashioning the story of England's founding hero into a serious stage musical in 1691. And Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Chamber Choir, soloists and their leader, Ivars Taurins, are a dream team in bringing all the musical drama to life once again for our ears, based on a sparkling opening performance at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre on Thursday night.
Actor R.H. Thomson is the narrator in this shortened, but still two-hour-long, version of the semi-opera, capturing our attention with his well-turned speeches. The three soloists – lovely Canadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc, British tenor Charles Daniels and American baritone Nathaniel Watson – do multiple-character duty with panache as well as remarkable finesse.
Long live this King.

John Terauds , The Toronto Star , 2009

Suzie LeBlanc’s solo work took us all to a new level of musical ecstasy.
LeBlanc and Halley collaborated on an extraordinary arrangement of the traditional 17th century French carol, Noel Nouvelet. LeBlanc penetrates the emotional core of every word in a song. Her subtle shakes at the end of phrases, playing with the pitch before dissolving it in a pianissimo unison with the organ, created a breathless hush in the huge crowd.
She returned later in the program to illuminate the higher harmonics in the choir’s singing of The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, with words by Christopher Smart, the half-mad 18th century English poet, and original music by Halley.

Stephen Pendersen , The Chronicle Herald , 2009