We Speak Music

Marie-Claire Giraud Set To Release Her Second Single ”Barcarolle” featuring Sondra Radvanovsky on June 19

Published

3 months ago

June 9, 2026

Vocalist Marie-Claire Giraud announces the release of Barcarolle, a luminous new single that dares to do what few artists would attempt: reimagine one of opera’s most beloved arias as a living, breathing jazz performance. The result is transcendent, a recording that honors the profound beauty of Offenbach’s original while opening it up to the world in an entirely new way.

Originally the celebrated duet from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tale of Hoffmann, Barcarolle is built around one of music’s most intoxicating lines: “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour, souris à nos ivresses”, Beautiful night, oh night of love, smile at our intoxication. It is a song about Hoffman’s eternal quest for love, and Marie-Claire has carried it with her for a lifetime.

“Sondra Radvanovsky is one of the most profoundly moving opera artists on the planet, and she is singing this duet with me.”

— Marie-Claire Giraud

To complete the duet, Marie-Claire invited opera superstar Sondra Radvanovsky, internationally acclaimed as “one of the most profoundly moving opera artists on the planet” (OperaWire), a 2025 International Opera Awards nominee, and widely regarded as one of the finest living interpreters of Verdi and Puccini, to lend her incomparable voice. The two sopranos’ voices intertwine with devastating beauty, creating something that is at once timeless and startlingly fresh.

“Singing the Barcarolle with Marie-Claire was pure joy. To hear a duet I’ve loved my whole life reborn alongside a live jazz band, opera and jazz meeting as if they’d always belonged together, was unforgettable. That fearlessness is her gift, and I’m honored she asked me to sing it with her.”

Sondra Radvanovsky

Barcarolle is a centerpiece of Marie-Claire’s boldly conceived new album, “My Big Bold & Beautiful Technicolor Fantasy”, a project that embodies her vision of a world where opera, jazz, pop, and classical music exist not in separate rooms but in one glorious, uninhibited space. The album also features a song co-written with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison.

Marie-Claire commissioned acclaimed New York songwriter and jazz pianist Jeff Franzel, whose songs have been recorded by artists from Frank Sinatra collaborations to Taylor Dayne and Plácido Domingo, with over 30 million albums sold worldwide, to write a jazz arrangement of the piece. Recorded with a live jazz band featuring piano, upright bass, trumpet, and drums, the arrangement breathes new life into Offenbach’s masterwork without diminishing a note of its grandeur.

“I always had the idea of mixing opera with other genres. Barcarolle is one of my favorite arias of all time, it deserves to be heard by everyone, not just opera audiences. Life’s most beautiful moments deserve this song.”

— Marie-Claire Giraud

Marie-Claire has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall (twice), the United Nations General Assembly Hall (seven times), Birdland, and Dizzy’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, among many prestigious venues. An Intercontinental Music Award winner and Amadeus International Classical Music Competition Silver medalist, she is a voice that belongs to many genres.

We Speak Music

Phoebe June Traces Love, Distance and Heartbreak on New EP ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’

Published

2 days ago

September 11, 2026

Joni Jones

For Phoebe June, some stories are easier to tell through music.

Her new EP, ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’, is an intimate collection that traces the emotional journey of a relationship from the exhilaration of falling in love to distance, uncertainty, heartbreak and, ultimately, learning to let go.

Inspired by artists including Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, Phoebe June combines diary-like lyricism with melancholic ballads, subtle uptempo moments and an understated, emotionally honest production style.

At the centre of the project is ‘Thursday’, a bittersweet track about loving someone from a distance and holding onto the hope that the connection might survive.

Written after Phoebe left a country that held deep personal meaning, and left someone she cared about behind, the song looks back at the relationship from its beginning. Even its title is personal: the two first met on a Thursday.

The song captures the complicated feeling of walking away from something meaningful without believing that it necessarily has to be over. It’s about distance, memory and the possibility of finding your way back to someone, while recognising that hope only works when it goes both ways.

Across six tracks, the EP develops that story in sequence.

‘Everything You Are’ opens the project with the warmth of new love, while ‘Dead Sea’ explores the security of finding someone who helps you stay afloat through difficult times. As the story progresses, ‘Thursday’ introduces separation before ‘Getaway Car’ moves into the aftermath; unanswered questions, lingering attachment and the realisation that someone can profoundly affect your life while still being unhealthy for you.

‘One Day’ leaves the door open to the possibility of a future reunion, balancing hope with the understanding that some relationships may only exist in memory.

The EP closes with ‘Ophelia’, its emotional breaking point. Inspired in part by Friedrich Heyser’s painting of the same name, the track confronts the pain of feeling manipulated and unappreciated after giving everything to someone else.

The result is a project that deliberately moves from light to dark. Phoebe June considered not only the narrative but the emotional progression when sequencing the EP, allowing the brightness of its opening to gradually give way to the heartbreak of its closing moments.

Even the title reflects that feeling.

‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ takes its name from a flower, with the image of a gate separating two people becoming a metaphor for a love that remains beautiful but just out of reach. To reach over it requires effort, just as maintaining a connection across distance, uncertainty and changing circumstances does.

Ultimately, Phoebe June isn’t interested in simply documenting her own heartbreak.

She wants listeners to recognise themselves in it.

‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ is a collection about love, nostalgia, hope and regret and about what remains when something beautiful ends up on the other side of the gate.