Psalm Sundays with Matt Lemmler

Olivier Bou who also goes as Oliv’, is best known in New Orleans as a saxophonist and vocalist. For the past few years, he has developed a new repertoire of original songs that he performs solo using a finger-style guitar accompaniment. His playing and singing are influenced by early masters of the style such as Mississippi John Hurt as well as by many legendary singer-songwriters of the sixties and seventies. Bou is fond of using alternate guitar tunings and composes songs in both English and French. His lyrics combine personal accounts and the collective experience. Many of his songs explore the passing of time. Bou has been a steady presence on the local singer-songwriter scene of the New Orleans area. In the past year he has also performed in France and Switzerland.

 Helen Gillet is a singer-songwriter and surrealist-archeologist exploring synthesized sounds, texture, and rhythm using an acoustic cello.  For someone with her varied background, New Orleans, with its mix of cultures and musics, seemed like a natural place to call home.  She was born in Belgium, raised in Singapore from the ages of 2 to 11, and routinely shuttled between the homelands of her Belgian father and American mother.  Over the years — working in New Orleans with musicians of all stripes, from avant-garde jazz and classical to pop and funk — Gillet has developed a singular polyglot style. The core of her work is solo performance with live looping, layering cello parts and vocal lines. Rhythmic figures emerge with bowed or plucked ostinatos or a variety of rubbing and slapping on the body of the cello, then enhanced with melodies played or sung in her haunting alto. Her mixed musical vocabulary is commensurate with her disparate travels — French chanson of the 1940s, Belgian folk tunes sung in Walloon, a mix of rock and punk from the likes of PJ Harvey and X-Ray Spex, and her own affecting originals, like audience favorite “Julien,” sung in a mix of French and English. Gillet’s solo performance is known for its enigmatic quality as she fabricates each song with innovative use of the cello and true mastery of live looping technology.  

Throughout a notable career as a New Orleans singer, song writer and performer, Sarah Quintana has been firmly rooted in her hometown’s rich music tradition—but eager to playfully explore its boundaries and possibilities. Her two self-released full-length studio albums, live concert release and EPs brim with a blend of jazz, folk and rhythm & blues, and her new BABY DON’T brings together an all-star lineup for an album inspired by Louisiana’s music and culture of the 50s and 60s. Sarah has partnered along the way with acclaimed Louisiana-based musicians, including Grammy winners Michael Doucet, Kevin Clark(The Nightcrawlers) and Leyla McCalla. She has received recognition from the Grammy Foundation Recording Academy, The Voice Foundation and The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Foundation, Big Easy Awards among others. When she’s not writing, performing or touring internationally, Sarah works as a music educator and a vocal coach to help others find power in their own voice. She is a fellowship-trained voice-pathologist and member of the Memphis Chapter of the Grammy Foundation where her research highlights the importance of creating vocal-health care pathways for Louisiana’s culture bearers and oral traditions. 

 Matt Lemmler is considered to be one of the most original musicians (piano, vocal, arranger, composer, educator, producer)  to recently emerge from the birthplace of jazz. Raised just blocks away from the home of  legendary New Orleans pianist/vocalist Fats Domino, Matt remembers a childhood in the Lower 9th Ward where music constantly filled the house. Matt, his brothers Richard, Jr. and Michael (also a great New Orleans pianist-bandleader), and his father, Richard, Sr., (a retired professional musician); played jazz and classical piano around the clock. After earning a Bachelor of Music from Loyola University and a Master's degree from Manhattan School of Music in NYC, Matt toured four years with Andrew Lloyd Weber’s The Phantom of the Opera. After touring, he came back to the Big Easy and sharpened his skills with some of New Orleans' finest bandleaders including: Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (over 100 years old); Herb Tassin and the Blue Room Orchestra, and master clarinetist Pete Fountain.