Helen Gillet is a singer-songwriter and surrealist-archeologist
exploring synthesized sounds, texture, and rhythm using an acoustic
cello. For someone with her varied background, New Orleans, with its
mix of cultures and musics, seemed like a natural place to call home.
She was born in Belgium, raised in Singapore from the ages of 2 to 11,
and routinely shuttled between the homelands of her Belgian father and
American mother. Over the years — working in New Orleans with
musicians of all stripes, from avant-garde jazz and classical to pop
and funk — Gillet has developed a singular polyglot style. The core of
her work is solo performance with live looping, layering cello parts
and vocal lines. Rhythmic figures emerge with bowed or plucked
ostinatos or a variety of rubbing and slapping on the body of the
cello, then enhanced with melodies played or sung in her haunting
alto. Her mixed musical vocabulary is commensurate with her disparate
travels — French chanson of the 1940s, Belgian folk tunes sung in
Walloon and a mix of rock and punk and her own affecting originals.

Free and open to public courtesy the Jazz Foundation of America, but please do tip the musicians.