Gabrielle Lee is a modern-day “Blackbird,” her voice and presence carrying the glamour, grit, and history of Harlem’s celebrated nightclub era and its performers into the 21st century.
She doesn’t simply sing the songs of the greats; she channels their artistry, living their stories onstage and ensuring their legacies continue to reach audiences who may never have stepped foot in a Harlem club or Paris café.
The term “Blackbird” refers back to the famed Blackbirds revues of the 1920s and 1930s—theatrical showcases that launched the careers of Florence Mills, Nina Mae McKinney, Ethel Waters, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Cab Calloway. These revues, first staged in Harlem and then exported to London and Paris, opened doors for Black performers on international stages at a time when segregation still gripped America.
White producer Lew Leslie created the original Harlem Blackbirds revue, assembling top Black talent for mainstream audiences. Florence Mills became the breakout star, admired for her charisma as much as for her singing. Subsequent generations of Blackbirds included names like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Ethel Waters—performers who balanced artistry with the heavy reality of breaking racial barriers.
“I consider myself a Blackbird now,” Lee said, as she laughs. “It’s never left me (the feeling of connection)… from that to Billie Holiday, to performing with Harry Belafonte—I felt like Dorothy Dandridge. There were three eras of Blackbirds, and I’m somewhat an extension of that legacy.”
Lee’s path to show business began in Nashville, Tennessee, where music ran through the family tree. “I knew I was supposed to be a performer ever since I can remember,” she said. “Since I was a little girl, I saw myself in my dreams as an adult performing on stage.”
Her aunt is a soprano opera singer, her grandmother played the pipe organ at church—“you know, those with the foot pedals,” Lee added—and her mother, who could sing, set music aside for a career in criminal investigation. Her children always came first including taking on extra work so Gabrielle could attend dance and theatre classes.
The moment her school discovered her talent is etched in memory. In fifth grade, while singing the alma mater with classmates, two teachers stopped in front of her mid-song, exchanged a look, and called her to the front. “They asked me to sing the song by myself in front of the school, no music. I had never done anything like that,” she recalled. “Ever since then, opportunities like that kept finding me.”
She excelled in forensics competitions, winning awards for performance and musical presentations. Her extracurricular activities included being a cheerleader, a majorette, student council ambassador in high school, Miss Teen finalist—almost any opportunity to be in front of an audience. Lee also kept honing her theater skills at The Nashville Academy Theatre, Circle Players, and other children’s theater programs.
Her first trip to New York, alongside her Granny, came with a visit to see her aunt, who was performing in Guys and Dolls on Broadway. She also took in Raisin, The Wiz, and other Broadway productions. “I was blown away, and it never left me.”
In one memory that still makes her wonder, Lee was dining with her grandmother and aunt in an Italian restaurant when a man approached their table, took her hand, and asked if she was on Broadway. When told she wasn’t, he replied “she should be” and advised they “get her here soon.” To this day, Lee suspects he may have been a Broadway director or producer.
Lee chose a college close to home to be near her mother and grandmother, and after a brief attempt at a secondary education degree, she switched to the theatre department—and never looked back.
“God has a plan,” Lee said. “Who knew I would end up singing background vocals for Harry Belafonte and other notables and seeing the world as a performer?”
She moved to New York after college to follow that plan. She toured in a production of Dreamgirls, and her first professional theatre job came almost by chance shortly thereafter seeing an audition notice for Blackbirds of Broadway in a trade paper. She didn’t go to the audition. The audition, however, kept popping up and one role in particular, that of a young Florence Mills. The production’s music director was Danny Holgate—famed for his work with Cab Calloway and as the original music director for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.
Lee took it as a sign and auditioned for Blackbirds of Broadway during a major New York blizzard, trudging to the studio through snow drifts because the subways had shut down due to the weather. Holgate led her through an intense 20-minute session, shifting from The Wiz to blues standards to “Summertime.” “It was like my mind was a jukebox,” she said. “Songs I didn’t think I knew just came out.”
When the audition ended, the director showed her a costume rendering for a character in a long, black velvet evening gown. “Who does this look like?” he asked. “It looks like me,” Lee said with amazement—and it did. Oddly, it was the same image she once saw of herself in her dreams. She was offered the role on the spot. The job also earned her all the points she needed to join Actors’ Equity without the usual multi-contract process.
Music work followed. Lee sung backup for artists she had once idolized and admired from afar like Natalie Cole, Steely Dan, Marvin Hamlisch, Common, Aloe Blacc and Harry Belafonte.
“(Working with) Harry Belafonte was huge to me,” she said sounding starstruck. “I used to kiss the television whenever he was on.”
The stage, however, keeps Lee the busiest with roles in National and European tours, Off-Broadway, and regional stages in such shows as Once on This Island, Smokey Joe’s Café, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Show Boat, Chicken and Biscuits, and Intimate Apparel among others.
Lee’s deepest passion project has been portraying Ada “Bricktop” Smith, the American singer who reigned over Paris cabaret between the world wars in a one-woman musical. Known for her red hair, freckles, and magnetic charm, Bricktop drew luminaries like Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes and the Prince of Wales to her café.
“She is the legacy of Paris cabaret,” Lee said. “Everybody that was anybody came through Bricktop’s in the ’20s and ’30s.”
Lee originated the multi-faceted role in a one-woman musical about Bricktop in her subject’s hometown of Greenbrier County, West Virginia, performed it at the National Black Theatre Festival, and later at regional theatres. She continues forward with work on a re-telling of it for stages in the cities and countries that defined Bricktop’s career.
“Her story needs to be told,” Lee stresses. During her research of the role she uncovered vivid details: Langston Hughes once worked as Bricktop’s busboy; acclaimed cabaret singer Mabel Mercer served as her assistant; Cole Porter wrote “Miss Otis Regrets” for her in her café. Even her hometown of Alderson, WV commemorates her origin story— as a child, she called herself “born in a lion’s den” after a circus lion escaped in her town; small lion statues still dot the streets of the West Virginia town.
In February 2022 Lee’s show, Blackbirds Legends at 54 Below in New York, celebrated not only her 54 Below solo debut, but Black History Month, Bricktop, and other idols including Florence Mills, Lena Horne and Ethel Waters. She performed Tin Pan Alley hits such as “Some of These Days,” “He May Be Your Man But He Comes to See Me Sometimes,” and “A Hundred Years From Today.” The show was equal parts tribute and reclamation, honoring Black artists who shaped American popular music but were often written out of its official story.
Colin Hancock, who played trumpet and cornet for the show, remembers working with Lee as a “fun and energetic experience.”
“She’s a dynamic performer who evokes the spirit of the cabaret and supper club performers of the jazz age in her stage presence and presentation,” Hancock said. “It was really cool to see the way this impacted the audience and then as a result the whole show had a great energy about it.”
Two years after Blackbirds Legends, Lee stepped into one of theatre’s most demanding roles: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. The play, originating off-Broadway in 1986 and on Broadway in 2014 with Audra McDonald in the lead role, requires a single performer to portray Billie Holiday near the end of her life, singing 15 of her most iconic songs while telling her story between numbers. The show is set in Philadelphia in 1959.
Presented by Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera’s at the Greer Cabaret Theatre, the show earned Lee critical acclaim. “Lee embodies it all, seemingly ever more inebriated as she recounts the tragedies and triumphs of Holiday’s life …, while singing in a voice recognizably Holiday’s—unexpected fluctuations in pitch, the distinctive phrasing and vibrato—while also revealing her own chops as a singer,” wrote Sharon Eberson for Onstage Pittsburgh. Eberson’s review highlights Lee’s performance as a “star turn.”
Holiday had been on Lee’s radar since childhood, though she admitted she initially found the singer’s work “depressing, sad” until she sang “God Bless the Child” in a ninth-grade school talent show. Later, a life-sized poster of Holiday given to her by a New York City’s apartment building landlady became a talisman. “She told me, ‘You’re going to play her one day,’” Lee said.
Lee’s credits stretch beyond the stage. She has appeared on Chicago P.D., Blue Bloods, FBI, Bull, and recently filmed her first feature-length horror movie, set for release in October. The Block, directed by Craig Singer, in which Lee portrays Grace alongside stars Jack Falahee, Chris Noth, in a supernatural thriller.
Lee is also highly active in community outreach, often speaking with young performers about perseverance in the arts. She believes giving back is non-negotiable if you’re not using your gifts to lift someone else up, what’s the point?
With that view in mind, Lee co-founded RiseHAITI, a Christian School & Orphanage in Arcahaie, Haiti. She performs for Sing for Your Seniors, (SFYS), entertaining troops and veterans, and is a committee member of Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project. She has lent her voice for book reads to organizations including Scholastic Inc., SAG Storyline Online and BookPals, and was instrumental in creating the Haitian Heritage Collection of Reads for NABU.Org. She said she most enjoys being an international ambassador granting wishes with Make-A-Wish Foundation Int’l.
Most recently, Gabrielle has been supporting actors, musicians, and creatives worldwide by designing personalized Digital Press Kits—high-definition, scrollable web pages tailored specifically with the artist in mind. As the Creative Artist Advisor at BluPela Media, she recently launched this innovative platform to help bring one’s talents, skills, passion, and achievements into the spotlight with flair.
Asked about the political and financial challenges of producing shows about Black history— and Black women in particular—in the current climate, Lee is pragmatic.
“I just do what I’m supposed to do,” she said. “I can’t worry about that. I try not to even read all the noise—it’s the same thing over and over. When you’re supposed to do something, you’re just supposed to do it. Maybe there’s a message in it someone needs to hear, or a song that could be healing for somebody. That’s beyond us. I call it walking by faith and not by sight.”
She believes performances can carry messages and healing that go beyond the artist’s control.
“The right people will show up, the right venue will appear,” she says.
For Lee, being a modern-day Blackbird is not just about style or repertoire—it’s about carrying forward an inheritance. “I feel like I was chosen,” she said. “This is the legacy I’m carrying. Delivering the gift.”
You can find Gabrielle Lee on Instagram and at blupela.net/dpk/gabrielle-lee/.
Brian R. Sheridan, MA, is the chair of the Communication Department at Mercyhurst University in Erie, PA (hometown of Ish Kabibble) and a longtime journalist in broadcast and print. He also co-authored the book America in the Thirties published by Syracuse University Press. Sheridan can be reached at bsheridan@mercyhurst.edu. Find him on Twitter @briansheridan and Instagram at brianrsheridan.
