There are so many reasons to visit New York City. Musically, you can find almost anything you want there. For example, if you are looking for a cosmopolitan retro jazz band that often performs World War II era selections like “Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy,” Fleur Seule is just that. If you care to visit one of the city’s storied locations, try the famed Tavern on the Green, the home of Fleur Seule.
The band is the creation of its vocalist, Allyson Briggs, who, while born many decades after that disastrous, but storied conflict, feels at home performing such selections because, “It was the music of that era that always speaks to me.”
While her band has had the Tavern as home base long enough to seem to have always been there, Briggs herself is from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where she decided on her career path at the tender age of five. She explained, “I was in a musical theater production, and I was just hooked. I said, ‘This is this is what I want to do forever.’”
Fortunately, her parents provided the nurturing environment that kept that goal in focus. They realized the importance of music for their children’s lives and provided all types to nourish its appreciation. She heard many kinds of singers at home from the giants of opera to Sinatra, Ella, Lady Day, and the Andrew Sisters.
Also, Briggs experienced some of the best. “I got to see Pavarotti in concert as a very young person, and that was very impactful. We would drive up to New York City and see Broadway shows. To be from a small town in Pennsylvania and see a Broadway show as a young kid was exciting. I said, ‘I want to be a part of this. This looks amazing.’”
Her public school not only had music; it also had a required art program that Briggs found maddeningly frustrating. “I was so dreadfully terrible at it. I would be in tears because I literally couldn’t do it, but there was another elective I could take, foreign languages. I found that German was worlds easier than art class. So, the following year, to get out of another art class, I added on French, and by high school, I had added Spanish.”
Her ability to absorb foreign languages was aided by an unusually strong memory. “When I was younger, once I heard a song, I knew every word, and I would recite it. I probably drove my family insane. But once I’ve been exposed to whatever song, then it’s there.” As a result, she can now sparkle her shows with songs done in seven languages.
“Sometimes it’s a blessing and a curse. I might have all these crazy songs going through my head all day long. Whenever someone is speaking to me, I’m withholding the urge to break out into whatever song that correlates with a word that they just said, because every other word is making me think of a song lyric.”
Musically, “I was in everything I could get into, the choir, private voice lessons, dancing, acting, everything I could squeeze into a day I would do. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the choir competition circuit, but it was the nerdiest of nerdy competitions. I thought it was amazingly fun. So that was kind of my vocal background up until going to NYU. That brought me to New York, and I just never left.”
As she was in New York, naturally her childhood dream seemed to be waiting. It wasn’t. “I thought that I was destined for Broadway. but Broadway was going into a pop rock era, when I was really pounding the pavements and auditioning. I said, ‘I’m just not fitting in here. This is not my personality. This is not my natural voice.’”
Her love of retro jazz, however, provided almost an accidental solution to her problems. “I had graduated from NYU, but I was drowning in debt. I worked in finance for a couple years as an analyst in a private equity firm.” It wasn’t the career she wanted.
Being young and musically talented with a normal social life in New York City offered another possibility. “I started meeting other musicians. If you meet a musician, he’s going to have a bassist friend who’s going to recommend a drummer, who’s going to recommend a trumpet player, and then you’re going to have a band. It just happened like that. We did a gig, and I realized this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“It was terrifying to leave a salaried corporate job to start a band. Everyone’s like, ‘Are you insane?’ Yep, but I knew this is what I was destined to do.” One reason for that terror was her location. New York has far more talented musicians than good paying gigs. Drawing attention to a band helps, and one Briggs made was her band’s name, Fleur Seule. “Subconsciously, I inverted a lyric from a Pink Martini song. They inspired the name for me.”
In spite of the name, the band ranges in size up to 15, depending on the gig; with many of the musicians keeping their place for many years. It’s almost always a quintet of the same guys at their weekly Tavern on the Green gig. That Central Park landmark first opened in 1934, but had closed in 2009. Redesigned to recall its 1930’s opening, the managing team must have felt Fleur Seule was a natural fit as the band has been there for over a decade.
Briggs explained how that happened, “I have to credit one of our fans. He said, ‘This historic restaurant just had a soft opening. They could use some really elegant music. Why don’t you reach out to them? I reached out to the GM, and I’ve been there for 10 years.”
Surviving as a professional musician is challenging, and there are more challenges if you’re the bandleader. Briggs explained, “If you’re in charge like I am, you’re basically creating a new office with new employees and new employers every night. You have to get everybody pulled together, make sure that you’ve filled in all the blanks, thought of all the things that could be missing or go wrong, and also bring people to that office each night.”
“When you commit to something, you might get bogged down and realize, ‘Wow, this was just a waste of time.’ You will get promised your big break daily. You have to learn how to filter through all of that and understand this is a good opportunity for me, or this is not a good use of my time. It’s hard to explain how often that arises every week.”
The band’s success is evident not only in their prestigious home base, but also in their recording output. In 2015 they released their first, The Return of Glamour as evocative of the 1940s and have steadily followed that with others also designed to capture the mood of that time. A later release, Swing Around the World, notes that this is a “young group of old souls.” Her tastes, however, are not based on the times so much as the talents. When something fits the style she loves, it can go into the band’s book. Hence, her new collection is Promises, Prayers, and Raindrops: Allyson Briggs Sings Burt Bacharach.
She has also performed with a number of great talents such as Catherine Russell, and Michael Feinstein at venues such as Carnegie Hall, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
She has been influenced by a number of artists such as Ella, but also, “I love Linda Ronstadt because she has one of the most diverse careers I’ve ever known an artist to have, and did it so well, from her folk to rock to Spanish mariachi to jazz standards to Broadway opera.” First, however, she acknowledges “I love Peggy Lee. She is a huge influence on me, so much so that Michael Feinstein invited me to join him on stage at Carnegie Hall in the tribute to Peggy Lee that we did two years ago. That was amazing.”
In addition to hearing her at a gig or on a recording, you might have heard her doing voice over work for many companies such American Airlines, GE, and Tropicana. The origin of this second career also started when she was very young. Fascinated by watching a video of Robin Williams dubbing his voice as the genie for the animated film Aladdin, she again decided, “‘That so much fun. I want to do that’ without realizing the 20 years that it would take and all the hurdles along the way to do that professionally.”
“That really took off for me about 12 years ago. I started really auditioning and building my client base. It’s a very, very tough world to gain some traction in, and very mysterious. There’s not a lot of a community to seek help within. It was just trial and error all by yourself.
“I tend to do a lot of very technical scripts, with tough medical language, or there’s a lot of need for these. They’re explainer videos, where you need someone who can break it down for you. It’s like an employee training or an overview of what does our company do.”
This second way to hear Briggs may be something we have all already participated in, but sitting in a club as she covers Edith Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose” sounds much more appealing.
Find Fleur Seule online at www.fleurseule.com and learn more about Allyson Briggs’ voiceover work at www.allysonbriggs.com.
Schaen Fox is a longtime jazz fan. Now retired, he devotes much of his time to the music. Write him at foxyren41@gmail.com.
