Jeannie Lewis
Biography
Jeannie Lewis has a successful career spanning over 25 years as a singer, recording artist, actor, writer and teacher. She has toured extensively in Australia and Overseas. She has developed her own style of theatre – concert show, blending elements of dance, theatre, visual arts, spoken word and music. These shows have inspired her 7 solo albums; from her first, Free Fall Through Featherless Flight, awarded Best female Vocal Album, Australian Radio Record Awards 1974, through to Piaf The Songs...
Jeannie Lewis has a successful career spanning over 25 years as a singer, recording artist, actor, writer and teacher. She has toured extensively in Australia and Overseas. She has developed her own style of theatre – concert show, blending elements of dance, theatre, visual arts, spoken word and music.
These shows have inspired her 7 solo albums; from her first, Free Fall Through Featherless Flight, awarded Best female Vocal Album, Australian Radio Record Awards 1974, through to Piaf The Songs And The Story, a live recording of the highly successful show. She has also recorded So You Want Blood, Tango Australis, and the most recent, SOUThHEART.
She has appeared on recordings by other artists, including Margret RoadKnight, The Backsliders, The Foreday Riders, Papalote, Going Home – ABC Music – a collection of contemporary Australian artists performing traditional Australian songs; for children, as member of the trio Cinderella Acappella a CD of songs by John Shortis and as Obelia on the Peter Combe musical, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie at the 1993 Adelaide Festival.
She has written the words for many songs. She wrote the script and songs for two solo shows which premiered at the Adelaide Festival 1982 – For A Dancer, and 1990 – Voxy Lady. Her text, Pilgrimages with music by Jim Cotter was dedicated to a friend who has since died from AIDS was recorded for Radio Helycon 1987.
In 1997 she was awarded a Fellowship at the Varuna Writer’s Centre.
Whatever the form of performance, her passion and preoccupation is the Voice and its Power as communicator. Her own musical and vocal style has evolved from many varied influences. Always open to new discoveries, she uses her voice as storyteller, protagonist and instrument.
This passion and preoccupation with the voice, as performer, writer and particularly as teacher has been fueled in the last few years by her work with teachers from the Roy Hart International Theatre Centre in the South of France, and in Corsica.
A 1993 Australia Council Individual Development Grant made these studies in France possible.
A lifelong interest in “other languages”, the people who speak them and their cultures and traditions has led to collaboration with performers from various ethnic backgrounds.
In 1984, she sang in Melbourne and at the Athens Festival in Ta Paratragouda a song cycle in Greek, music Tassos Ioannidis, a story of (Greek) migrants in Australia . SBS and Greek TV recorded it. Her 1987 tour of Mexico for the Festival Internacional Cervantino was the subject of a one-hour SBS special Marouba To Mexico.
In 1995, her Viva Diva concerts (as opposed to a dead diva, after several national tours with her highly acclaimed show about the life of Piaf) featured music and artists from Broome, Greece, Tibet, Beijing opera, South Africa, Argentina, Holland, Corsica and France and a large portion of original material.
Some of the repertoire, arrangements and artistic collaborations for this concert formed the basis for her group Tango Australis and their self named 1998 CD, which is receiving critical acclaim.
Her various collaborations with dancers, especially with One Extra led to the creation and performance of Life, Love, Death And The Weather with Chrissie Koltai, Anka Frankenhauser, Patrick Harding – Irmer, and Steve Blau. This was presented at the Performance Space as part of Dance Week 1998.
Jeannie also completed a short work with Flamenco Dancer Veronica Gillmer on a long discussed creative collaboration. Their presentation of this work-in-progress, Foot ‘N Mouth, as part of the 1998 Bodies season, received rave reviews.
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