COFFEEHOUSE AT THE WHEELER'S - The Music of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf

“Coffeehouse at the Wheeler” will become a French boite, or café, on Friday, June 17, when it returns with singer/guitarist Suzanne Sheridan and accordionist Don Gerundo performing an evening of café songs by Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel.more “Get ready to sip some French wine, eat a little brie and crackers while relishing the sounds and flavors of Paris,” says Sheridan. Check out the rehearsal on Youtube!

A professional photographer as well as singer and songwriter, Sheridan launched the Friday evening coffeehouses at the WHS five years ago. The venue takes its name from the Society’s headquarters, the 18th century Wheeler House on Avery Place.

For the upcoming Coffeehouse, Sheridan will sing such Piaf standards as “La Vie en Rose,” “Milord,” “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” and “Mon Dieu” and Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” and “Si On N’a Que l’ Amour,” (If we Only Have Love”) among others. Sheridan plans to sing the entire evening in French.

“Parisians love their cafes, known as boîtes,” Sheridan says, “and most French singers and songwriters begin their musical journeys singing in the boîtes of Paris.” Sheridan’s exposure to the Paris café scene came when she was in college and took a year abroad in Paris studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. More recently she has been attending French classes at the Westport library, where she used lyrics from Brel and Piaf songs to hone her French pronunciation.

Piaf, whose voice rang with pathos, and often sorrow, became a national treasure in France before she died in 1963 at age 47. Piaf was not her real name, but French slang for “Sparrow,” a nickname bestowed on her for her small stature and large voice. Sheridan says she “won’t try to sing like Edith, but intends to keep the passion intact.”

“Piaf had a lot of vibrato in her voice, and the French “r” is not natural for me,” she adds. “It’s been a great stretch, but I made a vow that 2016 would not be the same as 2015.” Sheridan and Gerundo tried out their Piaf-Brel show recently in at a restaurant in Waterbury, at the Connecticut Accordion Society’s monthly event, and “people screamed and yelled, they loved it,” Sheridan says.

Sheridan says she is drawn to the songs of Brel because “his songs are so deep.” As an example, she recites the lyrics to one of his most famous songs, “Quand On N’a Que l’ Amour”: “If we only have love, we can melt all the guns and then give the new world to our daughters and sons.” Another Brel song she plans to do is “Ne me quitte pas (If You Go Away”) a pleading composition Brel wrote after his mistress, the actress Suzanne Gabriello, cut him out of her life.

A Belgian by birth, Brel became famous when still in his 20s singing in Paris. His songs were introduced in the U.S. by the musical “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” which was a hit at New York’s Village Gate, where it ran four years in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Brel, too, died at an early age, 47, of an embolism related to lung cancer. It is not certain if Piaf and Brel ever sang together, although their careers overlapped in the ’50s and early ’60s.

Reservations Suggested, Cost, $20, 203-222-1424

Thank you to Webster Bank of Westport for sponsoring this event!