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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Can You Relate to This Story of Love?


“When you are totally in the moment, you are showing genuine enthusiasm” (Franzblau)

Sometimes you just happen to come across that someone and for curiosities sake, you want to navigate your way through that individual’s world to see what he or she is all about. Then suddenly, you find your energy is sapped because thoughts about the twinkle in that beautiful person’s eyes creep in and you are lost in the borders of a daydream.

The desire to go beyond the limitations of simply knowing that person’s name and smiling at each other leads to fertilizing knowledge about each other by spending time together and watering your hearts with love and the dream is no longer a possible utopia because you have taken a big leap forward towards that realm of reality.

And then you discover that in each other’s embrace, there is this tremendous reservoir of harmony that uplifts you and makes you feel happiness. At that point, there is no denying your feelings; you know that you have been infected with the emotion of love.

If this story relates to you in some way or another and you have experienced something of this nature, then you might be able to relate to my song that I just added on Soundcloud entitled, “Blindly Into Love.” 

The truth about love is, you may walk blindly into it because it can hit you when you least expect it and then the love story that is conceived, hits the ground running and you take it on with this indomitable courage and it is simply time and nature that become the most brilliant of authors of the irony of love.

All lyrics and vocals by Stephanie Jeannot. Music by Mike LeShore. You can check out the tune on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/stephanay-jnote/blindly-in-to-love

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Happy Birthday to Two of My Favorite Singers: Mariah Carey & Sarah Vaughan

Two of my favorite singers in the world share the same birthday. There has to be some irony in that!

Both put their entire body and soul into everything they sang and made me want to work hard to not only sing songs I love, but to understand some of the methodologies and theories behind music and I am thankful for that.

One of the two is Mariah Carey. She came into my life when I was in the fifth grade and I became mesmerized with her instrument. At one point in my life, my entire repertoire was comprised of Mariah Carey songs. I love her voice and her music. The second is Sarah Vaughan. Her timbre is amazing, and she just has this incredible way with her voice. My Ipod currently has more Sarah Vaughan tunes in it than any other artist and she is who I listen to the most. Happy birthday to Mariah Carey and to Sarah Vaughan.

Stephanie Jeannot as Sarah Vaughan
Earlier this month, I wrote a short one-act play which I entitled “And Then There Were the Ladies of Jazz” which went into production as a women’s History Month tribute at the Roosevelt Public Library in Roosevelt, NY. I played the role of both Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan which for me was wonderful because I was happy to be able to honor two jazz vocalist who I absolutely love while also sharing some historical data with the crowd before me that I felt was important for people to know; especially for those who did not know about the identities of these international women in jazz and how their roles in music played a role in the racial order or the time.



I want to share a short video clip from the show, where I rendered a cover of the song that Sarah Vaughan sang which was somewhat of the Genesis to her career entitled "Body & Soul" which she sung and won the Amateur Night at the Apollo contest and became who the world came to know as The Divine One. Hopefully you will watch it and enjoy what you hear as much as I enjoyed embracing it on stage with Charles Bartlett on trumpet, Daniel Dalelio on piano, Herb Lewis on Saxophone, Napoleon Revels-Bey on drums and Rachiim Sahu on bass.  





Thank you so much for checking out my blogpost. Have a phenomenal day!

Sunday, March 11, 2018

I Tried Something Different And It Worked. I Labeled It Change!


Neglecting to broaden their view 
has kept some men doing one thing all their lives” 
(Napoleon Hill)



Everything gets labeled on how you want to describe something. You look at a flower peeking it’s face out of the soil and you can easily say, it’s a hyacinth or it’s a rosebud. You listen to a sound of music and you can identify it as R&B, Jazz or Pop music. And so, thinking about this made me think about myself and how I label myself when giving a short description about who I am beyond just the face and name.

When asked to describe myself, usually the first thing I would say is that I am a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, NY which is true. But, I write more than songs.  


Poetry Writing


I have been writing poetry since the fifth grade and recently, I authored two poetry books: The first was titled “Pulchritudinous” and the second “And Then There Was the Music; Poetry & An Essay.” Check out my author page on Amazon Author Central here: https://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Jeannot/e/B076N7XYC6







Songwriting & Writing Compositions


I write compositions. The first one I ever wrote was quite recently when I found myself with this melody in my brain that I just had to write down on paper but what I wrote was more than just the words, but the chords of the song on paper before even recording the tune into what it came to be. Thankful that I had good friends who helped me to complete the tune entitled “God is Love” which you can check out on Spotify here:  





Blog Writing 


I write blog posts which surprisingly enough has been getting so much love lately and I am so thankful that people actually are interested in what I have to write. Thank you all who take the time to check out my blogsite. If it had not been for my college professor in his teaching of Professional writing, I never would have started writing blogposts at all. But he made us all start a blog site and this was my first one, if you are interested in checkign it out: https://stephanayjnotes.blogspot.com/.

Playwriting


And so, writing has always been my thing. But what I never did was found such an interest in writing something that I researched “how to” do it. It taught me how to place my words on the page, the font face to use, how to space things out and everything. And that is how I wrote my first play and the production of it was performed live this weekend for the first time.



It was nerve wrecking. It tested my faith. It brought tears to my eyes and made me work harder than I ever had at anything before, but I got through it.

For the first time ever, I wrote a little play, “And Then There Were The Ladies of Jazz;” a production that I could have never have been able to see come to life if I had let go of God’s unchanging hand. 

And Then There Were The Ladies of Jazz;

A Women's History Month Celebration
by Stephanie Jeannot

the cast of "And Then There Were the Ladies of Jazz
From left to right: Rachiim Sahu, Stephanie Jeannot. Napoleon Revels-Bey, JAzz E Matt,
Dalthannette Munlin, Danny Dalelio, Stacey Haughton, & Charles Bartlett.

The setting
The first television series by a person of color: The Nat King Cole Show on NBC


The Cast


Host: Nat King Cole  (Jazz E Matt)
Co-host in celebration of Women's History Month: Ella Fitzgerald (Stephanie Jeannot)




All-Star Band

Trumpet: Louis Armstrong (Charles Bartlett) 

Louis Armstrong

Saxophone: John Coltrane (Herb Lewis)

Piano: Bill Evans (Danny Dalelio)

Bass: Charles Mingus (Rachiim Sahu)

Drums: Max Roach (Napoleon Revels-Bey)


Max Roach


Special Guest Appearances

Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae

Billie Holiday (Stacey Haughton)
Carmen McRae (Dalthannette Munlin)
Sarah Vaughan (Stephanie Jeannot)
Ray Charles (Wayne Holmes)


Sarah Vaughan


I wanted to tell a story and I wanted everybody to hear some historical things dealing with racial and gender identities that these women in jazz had to endure to become the iconic individuals that they are. But I wanted to make it fun and give people something to watch that was interesting and fun. 

I can’t believe we did it. Thank you to everybody who came out to support and for laughing and clapping when I was hoping that these things would happen. You all are so blessed and to have this weight of wanting to see it happen as badly as I did, off my shoulder, is so inspiring to me; Especially after the worthless worrying, the setting up of the room, the three wardrobe changes I did which included trying to come out my shell by putting on my tap shoes, and the singing a plethora of songs that left me feeling weary, but good. All that is left to say is... thank you and God is awesome. 

And to all the people who gave me advice or had their hands in it. So very thankful. And for every circumstance that helped me with getting the costumes together or to printout some stationaries for my guest audience to take home and the putting together of props that seemed weirdly placed into my zine, just for me, at the most awkward time and in such unique ways. And for all the musicians and singers who had to see me get into my crazy... thank you for bearing with me. 

It was fun. It was a delight. It was a pleasure. It was a vision I had as a way of celebrating women’s history month and I am glad to have seen it come to light. And now I am happy to say, I am a singer and writer from Brooklyn, NY.

Thank you so much for checking out my blogpost. God bless!