“Music oft hath such a charm to make bad good”wrote William Shakespeare once in his play Measure for Measure. The music of Carolyn Leonhart personifies this sentiment, charming her listeners with her voice, evoking images of the Greenwich Village and Upper West Side in New York City, images of love, relationship, and joy, removing the bad from people’s lives for good. She has toured with Steely Dan as their lead backup vocalist, has established herself as a solo artist, has worked with numerous styles of music including hip-hop and a Swiss Percussion Group which uses glass to make music. She shares what she’s learned about music and singing with students at Berklee College of Music where she teaches.
The Quad recently had the opportunity to talk with her about her life, her career, and how she ended up where she is.
Leonhart grew up on the Upper West Side of New York, in a very musical family. Her father, the famed bassist Jay Leonhart, once accompanied famous music legends such as Sarah Vaughn and Mel Torme. As an 8-year-old, Leonhart was introduced to Sarah Vaughn after a sound check.
“My dad brought me over [to Sarah] and said to me, ‘Carolyn, I want you to meet Sarah Vaughn. You’re going to be very happy someday. And she shook hands with me and talked with me for a minute.”
These experiences, such as meeting Sarah Vaughn, and growing up in a musical household, helped her as she grew as a vocalist.
“Everything seems to always circle back to Sarah,” Leonhart says. “What I took from her was her phrasing and her style of improvising. I mean, there was no way of copying her actual tone or sound. But I think just the energy she brings to each song had a very powerful affect on me.”
Leonhart’s own vocal style is very soulful and enchanting. Her voice projects delight, strength, passion, and vulnerability.
She is a singer who, through many years of practice, possesses the rare talent in contemporary music of using her voice as an instrument, a talent to control her voice, and to fix her voice if there is a problem, just as a trumpet player can control the sound of his or instrument and a violinist can control the sound of his or her instrument. Leonhart never had any formal music training. Her secret?
“I just sang all of the time,” Leonhart said. “I learned by doing.”
She went to the University of Rochester and earned a degree in Comparitive Religions.
Leonhart chose to attend the University of Rochester because she was felt like she needed to experience something else other than music since she had spent her entire life up to this point with music as a constant and active thing in her life.
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This time, however, was a time of growth for Carolyn-both as a person and a musician.
“It was ignorance,” she said about her decision to not pursue a music school for college. “I did know about Berklee College of Music but I wasn’t sure. I think in my ignorance, and it really was ignorance, I thought there was nothing there that I couldn’t learn on my own.
“I also wanted to get out of New York. I wanted to make sure that I gave myself another experience besides city living because I knew this was where I was meant to be but I wanted to force myself away. And at the time I was working professionally and didn’t want to study music. I felt like the growth I needed to do was more than musical and I thought that would impact my music even more than studying music directly. I’m not saying that was the right choice, not that I regret any of the decisions I made but I also found the ideal environment.”
While at the University of Rochster, she was able to be involved with nearby Eastman College of Music, which is associated with U.R.
“I had the benefit of working every weekend on projects with all the jazz musicians. So I did have the best of both worlds wherein I was studying comparitve religion and still working with big bands and studio orchestras, and small groups all the time.”
Working with the different styles of big band, jazz ensembles and studio orchestras led Leonhart to an epiphany of sorts about music and its importance to her. She learned alot about singing and music working with trios, big bands, and orchestras. With a trio, things were more open whereas with big band and orchestra, someone would come to Leonhart with a piece written, and ask her to sing. It allowed her to learn and function with a big band chart. There was one specific experience, though, that had a greater impact on her than her other experiences at Eastman.
“One of the big band directors named Fred Sturm decided to do work by Kenny Wheeler, a pianist/composer/arranger. He had a CD for large and small ensembles. He would use the voice as an instrument, and I’m so lucky Fred Sturm made me do this project because that was an experience I’d never had before.
“I always wished I had played an instrument at that point because I always coveted what people have when they are in big bands, orchestras. You’re really a part of a team, you’re one very important element but you’re working for a greater whole that, went it works, is profoundly beautiful. And that was my chance to experience that. That experience taught me more than anything, reinforced in me what I really wanted to do was be a part of amazing music. My goal was never ‘I want to be a star’ or ‘I just want to get famous.’ I’ve always just wanted to try new things and experience new styles.”
Following college, Leonhart continued to sing at clubs in New York. One night, she performed in front of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen.
He remarked that he would remember her.
Three or four years later, in 1996, when Steely Dan began planning a tour, Fagen wanted backup vocalists for the tour. Leonhart was involved with a Swiss Percussion Ensemble, known as Lyn Leon, when she was contacted about trying out for Fagen to be a backup vocalist. Leonhart expected a long audition process but all Fagen wanted was the CD. And soon she was hired and she became the lead backup vocalist for Steely Dan, and has toured with the band for over eight years.
Four years after she joined Steely Dan, she released her first solo album “Steal The Moon,” a collaboration with pianist, composer, and arranger Rob Bargad. The album includes a track with her father, entitled ‘Moonwalk,’ a beautiful collaboration of his talent as a bassist and her vocal talents.
In 2005, Carolyn released “New 8th Day,” a record which, in a way, opened up what she wanted to do with music. In between the albums, Leonhart had worked on a number of different projects which included hip-hop acts The Real Live Show and Wax Poetic. She wanted to work with different styles of music before releasing another solo album.
“I was really trying to figure out what kind of style I wanted to do,” Leonhart said. “Did I want more acoustic or more electric? ‘New 8th Day’ was really the beginning of recording and doing the music, the sound that I wanted. Wayne Escoffery [her husband] became very involved in this project mid-way through the project which really helped me.”
Leonhart was frustrated because she was beginning to shift with what she wanted to do vocally. Escoffery offered to assist her, and help her to understand what she wanted to do.
“I really feel the strongest things on that album were because of Wayne,” Leonhart said.
“New 8th Day” brought a change with the band’s sound. The band dipped into standards but ‘New 8th Day” began new things for the band, a band in which the vocalist and rythmn section were not separate, a band that did not go into a passive mode, a band in which every member was equal and unified.
Following “New 8th Day,” she and her husband, Wayne Escoffery, continued their collaboration and released “If Dreams Come True” in 2007.
In 2008, Leonhart released “Chances Are–The Romantic Music of Robert Allen.”
In addition to singing, performing, and collaborating, Leonhart also teaches. She offers clinics, and she teaches at Berklee College of Music.
“[Teaching] has been amazingly interesting,” Leonhart says, “because I didn’t study music when I was a kid or college. People would ask to take lessons with me and I didn’t know what to teach them because I just learned by doing. I still maintain a large amount of learning is from listening and imitating.”
What changed for Leonhart was a vocal coach.
Leonhart experienced some vocal problems in 2005 and her vocal coach was able to correct the problems, and the vocal coach saw that Carolyn was interested in how she taught so her vocal coach helped Carolyn teach.
“I trained under her and learned vocal pedagogy. I wasn’t even sure why I was doing it at the time. I just needed more, to understand more. She changed the whole way of what I was doing. I had more information, I had more knowledge. My voice is an instrument like a bass, like a saxophone, and when things were wrong there were specific things. It doesn’t have to be a mystery. You can fix them. It’s science. It’s not magic. And once I had that under my belt, I could help people who asked for lessons.
“Berklee College of Music had been asking me to teach there. I kept putting them on hold because I felt I wasn’t ready. Then I realized ‘this is crazy. This could be an amazing opportunity.’ And I’m so glad I started teaching there because I’ve learned so much as a person, as a singer, from being there. It’s an amazing environment. It keeps me connected to everything that’s going on musically when I get caught up in my own little things, being so busy. I absolutely love teaching more than I ever thought I would. I get more out of it than the students do. I’m convinced.”
Leonhart also continues to do her Sunday Vocalist Series at Smoke Jazz Club in New York City, a place where she courageously used to sing even when the club did not have microphones. She has an upcoming performance at Smoke on April 26, which will be her last of the summer because of upcoming plans to tour.
If you’re looking for one last adventure before finals, do not hesitate to travel to New York City to watch Carolyn Leonhart perform, a woman who has deserved all of the success she’s had. You will be treated to a truly unique and special experience, and she’ll transform any bad into good.
Chris Monigle is a fourth-year student majoring in literature. He can be reached at CM660983@wcupa.edu.