The Ooh La La Coq Tail

Phoebe Legere, is a jazz composer, pianist, singer and multi-instrumentalist of French Canadian, Mayflower Pilgrim and Native American descent.

She has played with Warren Vache, John Zorn, Don Cherry, Cecil Payne, Charles ‘Bo Bo’ Shaw, Frank Vignola, Earl May, Dennis Charles, Greg Haynes, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Rufus Thomas, John Hartford, Ikue Morie, Morgan Powell, Howie Smith, Jim Staley, Larry Rivers and David Bowie. Legere studied composition with Morton Subotnick, Dinu Gezzo, and Milton Babbitt protege Wayne Oquin; and jazz with John Lewis of MJQ, Ira Newborn, and Rich Shemaria.

The New York Times wrote:

'Phoebe Legere plays the piano with enormous authority in a style that encompasses Chopin, blues, ragtime, bebop and beyond, and she brings to her vocal delivery a four and a half octave range, and an extraordinary palette of tonal color and meticulous phrasing.'

Legere started playing the piano at age 3, composed her first song at 6, started playing organ in the church at 9, studied piano at New England Conservatory and sang with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at 16. As a teenager Legere was signed to Epic Records. Phoebe Legere first gained the attention of jazz piano aficionados during her decade-long jazz piano residency at One Fifth Avenue. At midnight, after the gig, Phoebe moved farther downtown, experimenting with new musical forms, electronics and modalities of interdisciplinary performance. Monad, a philosophical concept which means “One,” was Legere's seminal Loisaida jazz/classical/electronic experimental art band.

In 2000 Legere co-wrote a work called The Waterclown for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. (TNC Recordings) She wrote three epic poems and, in collaboration with the Tone Road Ramblers, a composing collective, set them to music. Dark Energy, The Prairie, Common Root of All Organisms are all available on Einstein Records.

In 2001, Legere recorded a CD that combined experimental electronics, Afro beat, Native American music and blues called “Blue Curtain” (Einstein Records) In 2002, she won a NYSCA grant to compose an opera about the Native American holocaust called The Queen of New England and in 2004 she wrote and produced a musical called Hello Mrs. President about the first woman President of color.

In recent years Legere returned to school: to study orchestration, conducting and film scoring at Juilliard and NYU graduate school. In 2009 she conducted the New York Film Orchestra playing her composition 'Dark Harbor for Ved Mehta.”

Phoebe Legere has played at Carnegie Hall, the Algonquin, and CBGB’S. She has sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and with Frank Vignola’s Hot Club USA. As 'Phoebe Songbundle' she has sung and played to thousands of children in Native American education programs.

Legere was the resident composer for the Wooster Group and she has written music for downtown film, theater, and dance companies. She is now the Composer in Residence at the Theater for the New City.

Phoebe's Native American name is 'Songbundle' and indeed, she has written a thousand songs including college radio hit 'Marilyn Monroe,' and many songs for other recording artists including mega platinum Sony artist Kelly Chan. Last year she wrote and played on a CD with Brian Eno: her song “Ultra Romantic Parallel Universe” (2009) is available on Mercury England. In the USA she has recorded for Epic, Island, Funtone, Mysterious Ways and Einstein records. She has an extensive discography, both as a composer and a collaborator. Her bass player and friend for 20 years was the late Earl May, the left handed bass player on Coltrane's Lush Life album. Earl May was a founding member of Legere's 9 piece band, Swingalicious.

Her new band is called The Ooh La La Coq Tail. 'I'm putting Musette, Jazz and Blues together. For the past 10 years I've been making New Classical, Native American, and Experimental Jazz records, using invented instruments, wearable computers, and adventurous open structures. Suddenly, I felt like going back to basics: hand - made, virtuosic, and very American jazz music sung in that very North American language: French.'

The Ooh La La Coq Tail plays everything from Duke Ellington to Gershwin to Abenaki/Penobscot traditionals to the music of Phoebe Legere.

The Ooh La La Coq Tail is:

Phoebe Legere, Jon Burr (bass) who has played with Stephan Grapelli, Dorothy Donegan,and a host of major international jazz artists, Aaron Weinstein (violin), who plays with Bucky Pizzarelli, and Elvis Sinatra (Darius Brubeck) on guitar and vocals.


'Phoebe Legere has a magnificent voice, a wild sense of humor...She is an extremely intelligent Vassar graduate who can play four or five instruments and challenge every premise you might have about her as she zips through her set - her song selections are impeccably chosen. (She has) a dazzling voice - a superb singer miles above most of the rock stars of today ...a comic mind... She turns excess and extravagance into an art form and anchors it with stunning simplicity. ' - New York Post

'Phoebe Legere is one of the most, inspired and talented creative-supernovas on the planet...One of those rare luminous souls... beautiful, wickedly funny, anointed with wisdom, and her music possesses Native American mystical and healing qualities like Billie Holiday or Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davis or Sun Ra...' – Dimitri Monroe, Hits Magazine

' Legere is clearly ready for mainstream success. Legere's fine, four-octave voice easily goes from horn like contralto to crystal soprano. There's a winsome sweetness...and an aching, longing... rare originality and vitality...' - Variety

'Phoebe Legere, a name to conjure with.... She is an American original, she's fun, she's funny, she's smart, She's a beauty, almost like a Carole Lombard, but the main thing about her is SHE'S GOOD!' -Studs Terkel, National Public Radio

Legere is an expressive and versatile singer whose voice ranges from a dark and earthy alto to a gorgeous dazzling high soprano.... she combines intelligent lyrics and a fusion of French musette, Cajun and jazz into a stew she calls, 'roots alternative.' - John Pitcher, Washington Post

'Blue Curtain is important a piece of music as you're likely to hear all year, or any year'- Seth Rogovoy, The Berkshire Eagle

'Her beautiful voice, with its dazzling range and rich tones.... can take your breath away... she runs the gamut of music like a Marx brother crossing to stage left......She's solidly based in her art and she's is a superb musician. ' - New York Post

'Genius' - Glenn O'Brian, Interview Magazine

'The sexiest accordionist on the planet...' - TimeOut

'A serious gifted musician' -The Music Paper

'At the heart of Phoebe's performance is a joyous celebration of woman...(She shows) effortless versatility...refreshing...a crystalline empathy. ' - South China Morning Post

'Phoebe Legere's brand of articulate genius will have it's day – the time is ripe for a legitimate, American original who has it all - beauty, brains, talent, sex appeal, and a giving heart... A brilliant songwriter..' - Where Magazine

'The Female Beethoven' - Joey Arias, Paper Magazine

'The Female Frank Zappa'- Roman Kozak, Billboard Magazine

'Everybody is saying PHOEBE LEGERE is the new Bobby Short...' – Liz Smith, Nov. 17, 2007 - New York Daily News

'Let us now celebrate true talent. A wizard, a true star, with vision, beauty, and innovation...How does one begin to discuss the real magic of an unforgettable medicine woman, like the one and only, Phoebe Legere? It's difficult to not just fixate on her beauty, but even harder to deny her unbridled genius. She's already been compared by more learned writers than yours truly to every genius who ever lived... 'The female Freddy Mercury'. 'The Female Beethoven'. 'The Female Frank Zappa'. From Salvador Dali, to Sara Vaughan. She's a real heavyweight. She does the whole supper club/vaudeville thing so effortlessly it probably bores her, but the melancholic torch singing at the piano may be my favorite of her many Bowie-like personas, when she improvises for a room full of people with all the verve and wit of Louis Prima, Sam Butera, Keeley Smith, Bobby Darrin, and Chris Isaak all rolled into one. While singing with the range and soul of an uncola-diva. The soaring majesty of her golden pipes is really unimpeachable. If she was a dude, and ALL SHE DID was WRITE, we'd all still dig her, and follow her, even without the intoxicating doll-face.' -Kenny Silver, Sugarbuzz Magazine July 1, 2009

Like Marylou Williams, she can maintain a rollicking left hand that segues easily from stride to boogie - woogie while tickling the piano's upper register into sublime submission.' - New YorkTimes

'The Ooh La La Coq Tail CD is a bold statement to make in America at this time, when most recordings are nothing but self reflexive, cool - whip propaganda for the Machine itself. With no auto-tune, no quantization, and killer improvisation by an all virtuoso band, the Ooh La La Coq Tail is the antidote to whatever ails American music.' - Gaydio