Claron McFadden – Chez Bricktop

Montmartre

With the song cycle series American Beauties, soprano Claron McFadden and pianist Claire Chevallier highlight African-American artists who migrated to Europe from the United States after the First World War. One of them was dancer, jazz singer and vaudeville artist Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith (1894 – 1984), better known as Bricktop, because of her reddish-brown hair. She owned the famous Paris nightclub Chez Bricktop, the setting for this music theatre performance.

Chez Bricktop was a hub for French artists as well as for African-Americans who had moved to Paris to escape the systemic racism and constant denial of humanity they faced in America. Through the story of Bricktop, McFadden and Chevallier recreate the musical atmosphere of Montmartre, then known as the ‘Harlem of Paris’. The performance is structured like a radio broadcasting, with an audience and special guests. The jazz that arrived from America (i.e. James Reese Europe, Scott Joplin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington) is coupled with the French music of the time (i.e. Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Django Reinhardt).