Guylenn Delassus launched Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret with two concerts in October 2014. She is the neice of Rose-Aimee Butler, who has been innkeeper at the LaSalle Bed & Breakfast in Fort Wayne since 2002. Previously she was Youth Director of Fort Wayne Ballet for a decades. She and Clark Butler celebrated their 46th anniversary on November 7, 2015

Guylenn grew up in a jazz family. Her rather Guy was a jazz trumpeter. Her mother Gypsy was and is a jazz pianist. She began her career at fourteen years old in Madagascar when. After her parents thought she had gone to bed, she climbed out of her bedroom window and began playing the piano under contract to a local night spot frequented by the future King of Morocco. He was then exiled from French Morocco prior to the country's independence in 1956,

In 1974-1975 Guylenn, whose legal name is Guylenn, lived with her aunt and uncle in Nottingham, England, where Guylenn learned English at a British comprehensive school. She turned fourteen in that school year, and three years later began singing jazz. She became known in France by returning eleven weeks on a nationally televised talent show. She then began to be picked up by Paris clubs and cabarets, and joined the Claude Bolling Big Band as lead singer for a decade, recording  for BMG solo and Columbia Record with Bolling. On the BMG label she did the vocals for the only complete recording of Duke Ellington's Black, Brorwn, & Beige. 

After touring four continents with the Bolling Band, she settled in Paris where for over fifteen years she has been the jazz voice teacher at the Paris municipal Nadia and Lilli Conservatory.  Among the many professional singers she has taught, probably the best known is the South Korean jazz singer Youn Nah Sun.

In October 2014 Julia Meek, who hosts Meet the Music for radio station NPR WBOI in Fort Wayne, devoted a program to an interview with Guylenn. Part of that interview is available at \
http://wboi.org/post/jazz-vocalist-guylenn-brings-taste-paris-fort-wayne#stream/ 


s
c

Hoosier Steve Quinn Debuts at the LaSalle as a Jazz Vocalist

Saturday, November 21, 2015, 8-10 pm

Steve Quinn performs widely, including sports events like the opening National Anthem for the Colts, corporate events, weddings--venues where a singer is not typically asked to sing jazz. At the LaSalle he makes his Fort Wayne debut as as jazz vocalist. As a singer his credentials are undisputed. A jazz singer sings from the heart, not simply for the terms of a contract. Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret is regional and international in its roster of well-known jazz vocalists. Last month Artistic Director Brenda Williams selected our first true Fort Wayne jazz singer, Jamie Wise, and everyone agreed she made no mistake. It was jazz, not just jazzy. For November she has selected Steve. A cabaret singer sings in creative self-expression, not for an organizational mission or as a backup for jazz-unrelated event. A jazz singing is the most creative form of song, a expression of the unique individual. A true jazz singer artist immerses hier- or himself in the vocal tradition since Louis Armstrong, and then becomes a new original in that tradition of originals.www.lasallebb.com

Among types of jazz singers, Steve is a crooner. Crooners often sing from the Great Amercian Song Book, but sometimes do contemporary songs that help bring the young to cabaret. Frank Sinatra is probably the most celebrated jazz crooner. But as Steve will show this tradition still lives, He is not an imitation of Sinatra comparable to certain lookalike Elvis. As a part of jazz, he belongs to what is America's internationally recognized greatest contribution to the world history of music.   

Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret, with its intimate cabaret venue in downtown Fort Wayne at the LaSalle Inn at 517 West Washington Blvd. offers a free concert on July 13 at Three Rivers' Festival. Guylenn Delassus, a Parisian  jazz vocalist with a career of world wide performance, sings a show of American jazz standards in the East Pavilion of at Headwaters Park from 11:30 am - 1:30 pm.  Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret, with its intimate cabaret venue in downtown Fort Wayne at the LaSalle Inn at 517 West Washington Blvd. offers a free concert on July 13 at Three Rivers' Festival. Guylenn Delassus, a Parisian  jazz vocalist with a career of world wide performance, sings a show of American jazz standards in the East Pavilion of at Headwaters Park from 11:30 am - 1:30 pm. 

Josephene Baker, Paris, 1937

For a decade Guylenn was lead vocalist for the most important big band in the history of French jazz. Jazz has now expanded into what is known as world jazz, fusioning jazz arrangements and improvisation with the popular music style of many nations. But France was the second birth nation of jazz when, after World War I, Afroamerican GI jazz musicians stayed on in Paris believing they had found a a country free of racism.
     Of the many American jazz musicians and singers in Paris in that era, probably Josephine Baker was the most famous. Jazz soon took root among the native French. Great American jazz singers like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sarah Vaughan regularly appeared in Paris to perform over the decades.
     The great tradition of solo jazz vocal performance, like jazz in general, took root among the native French. The big renowned Claude Bolling led the most important native French big band for decades.  You can read his Wikipedia article. In the 1990's Guylenn sang on world tours with Bolling. She has performed with some of the most celebrated American jazz musicians, too. She got her start when she was called in to replace the great American jazz singer Sarah Vaughan who had fallen ill. She has performed with Dizzy Gillespie in Paris, and later on tour with the Jon Hendricks at the Twin Towers in New York City.
      If the first picture here at the top you see two covers from cd's she released with the Claude Bolling Big Band providing backup. These cd's have been released and are still selling. You can find them on Amazon. They both won awards comparable to the American Emmy Awards, known as Victoires de la Musique. They also won prizes from a widely recognized jazz organization that has been giving its prizes since 1937, when Louis Armstrong won.
     The more  important of the two CD's is probably is the won that has Guylenn singing solo in the only full recording every of Duke Ellington's jazz composition Black, Brown, and Beige. The title refers to the Afroamerican experience in America of over 300 years. The composition premiered in Carnegie Hall in 1943, but due to certain critical reviews Duke Ellington shortened the composition when he recorded it in the 1950's. Duke Ellington's son Mercer, also a fine jazz musician, knew Bolling and was in Paris around 1990 when a very young Guylenn recorded Black, Brown, and Beige with Bolling. Mercer Ellington remarked that Bolling arrangement of his father's composition was so good that Bolling "must have been hanging out with the wrong crowd."

     The second CD Guylenn sang for Bolling is a swing album. The reviews of these CD's regularly remarked on the quality of her singin. To get an idea, just above is a Youtube from a nationally broadcast French tv show with Guylenn singing to a thousand people at the Louvre museum backed the Bolling Band. Guylenn since the end of the 1990's wound down from the fast-paced, high pressure life of a vocalist in the limelight on tour. For over fifteen years she has now had a steady job as the jazz voice faculty member at a public music conservatory in Paris well known for its jazz studies program, the Nadia and Lli Boulanger Conservatory.

      She continues to perform, however. She has released another successful  CD with an ensemble, Six et Demi. Below is the audio of recording released in August 2013. She performed for the first time in America since the '90's in Fort Wayne at LaSalle Jazz Cabaret in October 2014. She is again in concert at Fort Wayne's LaSalle Inn venue on July 24 and 25. On the 24th she will sing songwriters from Indiana, and on the 25th a concert with jazz renditions of favorite Parisian melodies.
      The Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret booking with Guylenn Delassus at Three Rivers was arranged after all the national evening acts had already been booked.  Making an effort to be there would be an excellent warm up for real jazz cabaret on the 24th and 25th. This kind cabaret exists in every great cit of the world. It exists in Indianapolis, where Cabaret Artistic Director Brenda Williams comes from. Brenda herself has been a standout widely touring soloist, and she continues to have an extensive fan base in central Indiana.
     Fine jazz bands exist in Fort Wayne, but Brenda is bringing an experienced jazz piano accompanist Craig Hicks up from Indy for Guylenn on the 13th, and then on the 24th and 25th as well. There are excellent pianists already in Fort Wayne, but the high degree of improvisation seen in a vocalist like Guylenn requires a specialized piano accompanist who can see and follow where the singer is going when she departs from the straight melody and sheet music. This is perhaps the most unique individual type of singing that there is, and yet it requires long mastery of the language and special techniques of jazz voice singing.
    Guylenn from July 10 to August 15 is Artist in Residence this Summer at Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret. She will be available to young singers who would like to study the art of jazz singing. She is open to two weekend jazz vocal intensives on the first two weekends in August if there is interest, with Sunday even performing opportunities at the LaSalle Inn. If she discovers a young singer who is new with something unique to offer vocally, who has the self-confidence to stand up and sing without louder music hiding his or her mistakes, the evening of August 14 is being held in reserve for a last show before Guylenn returns to Paris. It would be an especially welcome plus if that young singer has the self-confidence, poise, and ease to work an audience as something of an entertainer.   Her email is
   

Vocalsit Guylenn Delassus, Contact Information, Summer '15 in Fort Wayne

...as I was going to say before the first blog blew off, Guylenn Delassusshe may be contacted personally at guylenn.chantjazz2@gmail. 
    She may also be contacted from July at info@lasallebb.com
     Speaking of jazz solo vocal performance, Fort Wayne should take note that our city on August 5 at the Embassy Theatre close by Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret at the LaSalle Inn is on the 2015 world tour of Diana Krall! J
      azz is not just singing old standards from the thirties and forties. It recreates itself ever anew compelling new renditions of the familiar melodies of younger generations--especially when that popular music begins to be so familiar that that I-have-heard-it-enough feeling begins to settle in. That is a golden opportunity for jazz voice performance to strike!
Clark Butler
Publicist for Artistic Director Brenda William
Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret
July 2, 2015