She performs what she refers to as "the soundtrack of our lives" covering artists from Stevie Nicks to Stevie Wonder, Billie Holiday to Bill Withers, John Denver to John Legend, Etta James to James Taylor, Nina Simone to Carly Simon, Amy Winehouse, Adele, George Ezra and so many more!Ĭeleste was classically trained at Chapman University as an opera singer and brings rich, clear, deep, soothing & sultry yet powerful contralto vocals to this vintage music. She performs a wide variety of easy listening classics from many artists with an impressive repertoire of over 450 songs from over 10 decades of music. By the time she ended her concert with the tenderly gorgeous Strange, the audience were on their feet, roaring approval.Top 40 Adult Contemporary & Indie Recording Artist for Radio Charts NationwideĬeleste Barbier is a premier solo vocalist & recording artist located in Southern California, based out of North San Diego County. Love Is Back, Ideal Woman and Only Time Will Tell were utterly mesmerising. What this unusual concert set up helped do was bring the audience into Celeste’s internal space, with moments of incredible, almost revelatory, power. As it turned out, she has little of the commercial drive and mainstream appeal of either of those artists, but seems to have found a quite magical space creating emotional, melodious songs with an air of timelessness utterly detached from contemporary trends. She had aspects that might have hinted at a jazz pop crossover in the vein of Amy Winehouse, or a powerhouse balladeer such as Adele. When Celeste picked up the BRIT’s Rising Star award in 2019, there was a sense that the music industry didn’t really know her at all. ![]() Lacking familiar signposting, the audience frequently clapped in the wrong places, cheering during little breaths and pauses before songs picked up again and Celeste continued on her way. The night’s set included several as yet unreleased songs, although even her more familiar ones (mainly from 2020 album Not Your Muse) were radically rearranged. Throughout the night, interpretive dancers posed absurdly, baffling props were wheeled on and off pointlessly, a group of elaborately dressed women wandered on to recite pretentious prose excerpts, while Celeste stood centre stage, dressed with gothic theatricality in a long black gown, feathered headpiece and elbow-length fingerless gloves, waving her arms as if conducting something from her imagination. To which, I can only add, I am glad someone did. ![]() It takes a bit of getting used to, put it that way, and her own poise and confidence went a long way towards reassuring the audience that she genuinely knew what she’s doing. In the lower register, she sings slightly off the centre of the note, to a point that veers towards flatness, then just when it sounds as if it's all about to collapse, she can suddenly soar into full lung powered melismatic expression or swoop up to a lovely falsetto. It is, no question, a very unusual voice, owing more to such vintage jazz stylists as Billie Holiday and Nina Simone than to any of the R’n’B inflected warblers of the contemporary pop landscape. Celeste’s low, tremulous voice was always clear and to the fore. For this one-off event, the unabashedly eccentric Brighton-raised chanteuse was backed by a small orchestra and the Hall’s huge inbuilt organ, reconstituting her already off-kilter jazz soul oeuvre into something even more intricate and strange, where delicately syncopated strings and horns provided rhythmic pulse surrounded by smoky swirls and curlicues of sound. ![]() ![]() Amid the glow of hundreds of candles and a lone spotlight, beneath the ornate dome of the Westminster Central Hall, singer-songwriter Celeste drew a rapt audience into her peculiar world.
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