Madeline Tasquin

Singing in both English and French, Canadian-Californian songcrafter and multi-instrumentalist Madeline Tasquin weaves nimbly from jazz-tinged folk to odd-meter soul, from twisted pop ballad to delicately dark fairy-tale. Raised in Quesnel, British Columbia by her opera singer mother and Austrian gold-miner father, Tasquin began playing the piano as soon as she could reach the keys and developed her acute sense of harmony by singing on long car trips as a child with her mother and two younger sisters. In her teenagehood, Primus and Mr.Bungle played on repeat alongside Rachmaninoff, Satie and Chopin. After completing a degree in Architecture in Sydney Australia, she returned to her musical roots upon relocating to Berkeley in 2006 and has since picked up the concert ukulele and gypsy guitar.

Tasquin honed her performance skills, and tamed her stagefright, through four years as the front-woman of the Oakland-based polyrhythmic funk/rock band Antioquia. Since beginning her solo career in 2011 and releasing her debut Another Trip Around The Sun in 2012, Tasquin has pushed herself to dive deeper into her own sound. Her songs carry with them the classical and folk traditions she absorbed from her mother, the groove-oriented collaborative spirit of the rock band, and her signature odd-metered blues and soul, creating a genre-defying music – often labeled jazz – that is compelling and captivating, and features her inspiring voice singing in both English and French about the natural world, the cosmos and her fervent belief in the inherent creative power of humanity.

This year she has pursued a rigorous performance calendar in the Western US and Europe, and Tasquin’s growing list of collaborators is significant. She has worked with a host of San Francisco Bay Area talent, including Reed Mathis on bass (Tea Leaf Green, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey), Paul Bertin on saxophone (La Pêche, Inspector Gadje), Rebecca Kleinmann on flute (Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto), Deren Ney (Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers) and George Cole (David Grisman) on guitar, Dan Cantrell on accordion (Tom Waits, Joanna Newsom), Trevor Garrod on banjo (Tea Leaf Green), Ezra Lipp on drums (Sean Hayes, Mohsen Namjoo), and the Amaranth String Quartet. Her current group (pictured below) features acclaimed drummer Amir Oosman (Devin the Dude), Joe Salcedo (Lakin) on bass, and Bradford Isaaq Tidwell on guitar (Joomanji).

With her 4-octave range, dynamic compositions, and passion on and off the stage, festivals and other venues have opened their doors, and 2015 is “full steam ahead” for the prolific Tasquin.

Her group’s schedule for the early part of the year is quickly filling up, with both Europe and Canada tour plans in the works, and slated appearances at top-line venues like Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Coffee House (sharing the stage with Seattle-based saxophone quartet The Tiptons) and downtown Los Angeles jazz club Blue Whale. She is also already on the docket for May’s Joshua Tree Music Festival in the Southern Californian desert. A full-length album is in the works and is expected to hatch in spring of 2015, a co-production collaboration with producer-composers Daniel Wright and Dan Cantrell. Show less