I don’t know why it took me so long to ‘discover’ Noria Letts. I’ve been aware of her, as a consistent presence in the Melbourne jazz ecosystem, and knew she was regularly doing French jazz-and-chanson shows (the only French singer to do this, as a matter of fact) but I wish someone had alerted me sooner to her magnificent artistry.
When I finally got to see her on stage, I was certainly not prepared. Not for the power of her voice, not for her signature vibrato (which can cause structural damage to a concrete building), not for her commanding presence, not for her eclectic repertoire. Surrounded by a stellar band of Melbourne legends of all ages, she goes from Monk to Bach, Coltrane to Brassens, Django Reinhard to Jacques Brel, like they had all been commissioned to write songs specifically for her. “How long has this been going on?” I asked myself, after picking my jaw up from the floor. “Why am I just finding out? Who is responsible? Heads will roll!”
When I calmed down, I thought it was best to go to her and ask her a single question:
– Noria, tell me the story of your life.
Okay, try not to fall asleep, haha.
I was born and raised in France, but I come from a very strange ethnicity — my father was a gypsy from the mountains of Morocco. I have always been very musical; I was a sax player when I was very young, but later, when I travelled to Canada and the United States, I started to sing.
Then I met an Australian at a Jazz Club in France, fell in love with him and I’m still married to him.
I came to Australia in 1996. At first, it was really hard to find gigs. If you’re not Australian, some doors are hard to open. Also, my style was very different. Most female singers would sing the Ella Fitzgerald songbook, but I would do the standards that nobody else would do, like ‘Take 5‘ and ‘Giant Steps‘, tunes that need a big range. I got a big range, I can sing very low and very high; I also have a different approach because I used to be a sax player, I would work hard to make sure I reached a note.
But I was very lucky: I met Gil Askey, and Bob and Steve Sedergreen, and they invited me on stage to sing with them. Bob will still use me in his classes, as an example: “a singer who can sing everything in standard keys” because of my range.
So I came to Australia, I was teaching, managed to do a few gigs, and then I became a mother and decided that I wanted to spend time with my children, not other people’s children.
I have two daughters; I love my girls and they did very well, but I didn’t have them very young – although we’re not mentioning my age here, haha. I had almost six years between the two, so I got a sniff of freedom with the first one and I’m like: ‘oh, that year 12 is coming again!’ You know what I mean? I couldn’t wait for the time when I didn’t have to go to another basketball game.
All that time I kept singing, especially with the Steve Sedergreen, and just before COVID, I started to want to sing more in French. Before that, I tried to avoid being labelled as a ‘French Singer’, but I found myself wanting to use my ethnicity in my singing, I became more comfortable with it.
In January 2020, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer and cancelled everything. Then COVID happened, and everyone was on the same boat, we all had to stay at home, but for me, those were years of treatment. During treatment, I decided I would do more gypsy jazz, which is a passion of mine, but I had been avoiding it, because I didn’t want to be labelled as that. Then I got to watch La Vie en Rose, the Edith Piaf biopic, which is based on a rubbish book, and I felt outraged. I read her real biography, and decided to do a show on her. I wanted first of all to tell the real story. I love her music and when I sing it, I live it. That’s my third hat.
I’ve got three hats; one that is jazz – you can cook something with jazz; the other is French gypsy jazz, which is extremely vibrant and happy; and the third one is when I go on stage and script the life of Edith Piaf in France.
I enjoy doing the Piaf show. I got to travel through Australia with it, and it was great. It did something to me that I needed to do, from inside out, reach a certain frequency, I needed it at that time. I needed it at the second stage of my life.
I’ve got a certain vibrato, and all my life I worked very hard to smooth it up, because I wanted to be part of the jazz world. I wanted to sound more Americanized, you know? That’s what happens when you’re young.
Eventually, I reached the time of my life, when my needs were different. You become a bit happier with yourself as you get older, you reinvent yourself every ten years anyway, or you should because you’re a different person pretty much, every 10 years or so.
Okay, so that’s what happened; the French jazz started just before cancer, and I really started to get a great response from it. Then I started to mix in my jazz show, and do French songs. I transcribed tunes by Django Reinhardt, and I’ve put words to a lot of his songs.
– Do you ever combine these three programs?
No, they’re different things. I sometimes sing ‘Milord’ in gypsy Jazz, because it’s very rhythmic, but not in a Piaf style. The voice is still here but it’s not phrased in the same way, the rhythm, is different and the phrasing is different. I’m also doing Bach in gypsy jazz style. I love classical music as well, Bach, Beethoven, and Ravel – these are my three guys.
