"Like nothing else I've ever heard in my life" "I was just blown away with her" Cerys Matthews, BBC Radio 6
"Jazz and Folk flirt en route to New Orleans via Canterbury with Evans' slinky, supple vocal...One slot on Later with Jools holland is all it would take" Prog Magazine
"Leonie Evans lends old school sass... growling and emoting over louche horns and rolling percussion" Evening standard
"When Leonie Evans sang, the affect was ethereal" The Tanjara
"Utterly unaffected and altogether rather magical" Venue Magazine
"Leonie Evans' distinctive vocals were magical. An astonishingly good simulated trumpet sound in her understated stride she kept the audience in her thrall." The Bristol Post
"Delicate, whimsical voice which occasionally rasps vigorously across to the back of the tent and beyond" Stephen Morris, Rock Kent
Biography
Leonie Evans was born & raised on the edge of South East London & Kent.
She's a multi instrumentalist, singer songwriter and occasional session vocalist, teacher & event organiser who has been performing since the age of 5 & has never stopped.
Rather than embarking on a conventionally "successful" album/tour/album/tour/... career as someone with such a rare voice, writing talent and stage presence so effortlessly could, Leonie Evans has chosen to do something much more interesting and fun.
Her output to date has included two exquisite albums of dreamy, jazzy, unclassifiable song craft as part of the Bristol-based quartet Rae, plus a handful of small runs of homemade CDs she's sold along the way of her endless, meandering tour of everywhere (in recent years, she's been engaged in something like a micro scale version of Bob Dylan's "Never Ending Tour", living a largely itinerant life from gig to gig, travelling around Britain and Europe with occasional excursions to Japan and the USA).
But what sets her apart from just a discography & list of tour dates are the countless guest vocals, collaborations, DIY video sessions, stints in the streets and jazz clubs of New Orleans, spontaneous jams at parties and festivals and, perhaps most precious of all, the sprawling web of connections growing between Leonie and her ever-expanding family of musical sisters and brothers.
She lives for, and is fully immersed in her music, and her inherently cooperative, rather than competitive, spirit means fruitful new connections are continually being made.
Written by Matthew Watkins go HERE to find out more about him..