“The Illusion of Blue” is a collection of compositions that explore love, loss, commitment, and rebirth through themes of water and other natural settings. Nature is the grand inspiration for most of the songs, which artist Jamie Leonhart has created and curated over the recent past. Storms, winds, flora and fauna, estuaries, and oysters populate the material. The sea continuously offers succor and inspiration for this singer-songwriter. The concept for the name was born after a trip to Iceland, where nature rules and volcanoes and glaciers live in tempestuous harmony. This record was slated to be complete in April 2020, but the timeline was radically curtailed due to the pandemic. Over the course of the many months in limbo, it became clear that there were two distinct voices - The Illusion of Blue side A, one that invites and entices us into the waves from a singer/songwriter’s perspective and the other, The Illusion of Blue side B, that frolics in the sea as an interpreter of song, examining melody and lyric as an explorer. This evening will be a celebration of this project and a jubilant return to performing live for Leonhart.

Drawing comparisons to the likes of Norah Jones, Feist, Madeleine Peyroux and even Sarah Vaughan, the sharp-witted singer-songwriter Jamie Leonhart is an artist who is difficult to categorize, dynamic in emotional range and diverse in genre-crossing ability. Leonhart inhabits a hybrid of popular music that incorporates jazz, indie-pop, and quirky torch song cabaret. Live, her audience becomes a collective co-conspirator as she intones her confessions, dissatisfactions, and desires, supported by arrangements that move from somber to playfully bombastic in a moment. Leonhart’s approachable demeanor belies powerhouse vocals and her ability to deliver intricate lyrics and melodies, which she does with depth and clarity. Jamie is employed as both a commercial voiceover artist and vocalist (Lifetime, Trulia, Kohl’s, Betty Crocker, Neutrogena brand, Tresemme, Johnson & Johnson) and also works as a background and session singer (Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, St.Vincent, Judy Kuhn, Paul Brill). Her debut record, the truth about suffering, was released on Sunnyside Records. Jamie is a 2015 commissioned NEW YORK VOICES artist of The Public Theater/Joe’s Pub, and created ESTUARY: an artist | mother story through this commission.

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