Martha Wainwright Performs Edith Piaf Covers at Vanity Fair Event

Posted on Nov 9th 2011 1:30PM by Kelly Mahan
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Neil Rasmus, BFA

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, around 80 lucky guests gathered at La Grenouille, a cozy French restaurant on New York's Upper East Side, to partake in an evening hosted by Vanity Fair, jewelry designer Solange Azagury–Partridge and Martha Wainwright. The evening's entertainment included the singer-songwriter performing three songs from 'Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, à Paris: Martha Wainwright's Piaf Record' along with selections from her own repertoire.

The intimate affair consisted mainly of Wainwright's friends and family, including her brother Rufus, who formed a cheering section at the top of the stairs to support her every word.

Decked out in jewelry from Azagury-Partridge, 'Wizard of Oz'-style striped tights and a French twist, Wainwright and pianist Thomas Bartlett took the stage, which in this case was a small balcony overlooking the glow of La Grenouille's main floor.

With the release of her first note, friends pressed against wine racks and stared up in adoration, absorbing Wainwright's rendition of Edith Piaf's 1957 classic 'La Foule.' Friends smiled as, in true Piaf-style, she poured over the balcony along with her printed-out lyrics, tackling each note with the same intensity as Bartlett's chord progressions.

Martha Wainwright Sings Edith Piaf at La Grenouille in New York

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Listening to Wainwright sing the works of the French cultural icon, the untrained ear would think it was the Canadian-American folk singer's own songs. The Francophone chanteuse found that the intensity of her life, after the loss of her mother and the birth of her first child, drew her to Piaf's therapeutic words.

"It's nice to be able to attach my own life to it," Martha explained to Spinner when 'Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, À Paris' was first released. "I'm not an actor and this is not a recreation of Piaf, so it's important for me as an artist to be able to feel these songs. That's probably why I picked these specific songs, because there was something in them that spoke to me."

The singer moved gracefully from Piaf to her own music, donning a guitar and a powerful, gritty tone with each song. Her fifth song was an emotional piece she wrote about the loss of her mother, Kate McGarrigle, to sarcoma. The Wainwrights have famously worn their hearts on their collective sleeve, but this song was written by a changed artist, one who has focused the last two years on singing Piaf, an emotional boot camp that would affect any artist's work for the better.

"I don't think people are necessarily going to be able to detect Piaf [in my music] from now on," she explained in the same interview. "But at the same time I think that singing this [material] is really hard, and all of the things that you put your voice through must have an effect on how you can then use your voice later."

She left the stage while cheers abounded, the most coming from Rufus, who nudged her to sing another. For the encore, she dedicated 'Tell My Sister,' a song written by her mother, to Rufus and, like a supportive stage mom, he mouthed every word, grinning from ear to ear.

Watch Martha Wainwright's 'You Cheated Me' Video

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