Louise Blackwell brings her love of Paris back to Adelaide with the jazz French Set and her cabaret festival shows
The promotion for a Bastille Day appearance at The Gov (Governor Hindmarsh Hotel) at Adelaide's Hindmarsh by Lou Blackwell and the French Set.
Louise Blackwell’s love of Paris, brought back to home town Adelaide, bloomed by gathering some of the city’s top jazz musicians into Lou Blackwell and the French Set and presenting her cabaret festival show, Love on the Left Bank (2020, 2023).
Blackwell’s jazz inheritance was from her Adelaide parents, Imelda Bourke, an acclaimed singer in the 1950s/1960s, and father Daryl, a pianist with bands such as the Swing Kings. They had five multi-talented children: classical musician Lisa, actor Paul, theatre/film producer Madeleine, drummer and sound recordist Mark and youngest Louise.
Paul and Madeleine, both accepted into the National Institute of Dramatic Art acting course in Sydney, influenced teenage Louise towards theatre. In her early school years at Loreto College, she was cast as the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. A move to Pembroke in senior school nurtured Louise’s love of singing through its choir, while shaping her acting with Unley Youth Theatre.
Beyond school, Louise successfully auditioned for South Australia's children's Magpie Theatre then directed by Geoffrey Rush, later to act alongside her brother Paul. At 19, Louise moved to Sydney and signed with talent agent Lee Leslie Management, who also represented Paul and Madeleine. She gained theatre roles and television spots but moved to Melbourne and started an arts degree.
She also joined sister Lisa in a seven-piece band formed from avant-garde poetry nights at the Perseverance Hotel, Fitzroy. The band, Friends and Relations, had sisters Mairead, Deidre and Shelagh Hannan, with Marian Crawford and singer Paul Kelly’s sister Mary Jo Kelly. Doing arrangements of Irish and Greek songs, the group had highlights such as the Guinness Irish Festival of Music at Dallas Brooks Hall and nurtured Louise’s love of Irish music. Louise collaborated with sister Lisa on recording Sea Is Turning, an album of her songs.
In the late 1990s, aged 30 and after a breakup with then-boyfriend, tenor saxophonist Mark Simmonds, Louise took the chance to get away through a scholarship in French literature and cinema studies at Lumière university in Lyon. Louise, who’d studied French at school, spent a year in Lyon before moving to Paris and enrolling in a bachelor of arts in cinema studies at Paris 8 University.
She taught English and worked as a waitress at a restaurant called Woolloomooloo, owned by South Australians Vincent Lange and Genevieve O’Loughlin. Louise also befriended Mariadèle Campion, who helped her learn about real French culture. Louise developed her singing, taking lessons with renowned jazz singers Sara Lazarus and Michele Hendricks.
She continued with her love of Irish music, singing in Irish pubs in Paris, mainly at The Quiet Man in the 3rd arrondissement. She impressed an Irish businessman who funded her first jazz gig in Paris, in the small L’Ogresse marionette theatre in the 20th arrondissement. She found musicians to back her and recorded three CDs in Paris: The Blue Lou Quartet (2001), Sea is Turning (2007), Paris Hop (2014).
After 10 years, visa issues forced Louise to return in 2007 to Australia and eventually settle back in Adelaide. She began performing at jazz gigs with the Bruce Hancock Trio, gradually introduced some French songs into the repertoire. A French show began to develop and Louise then formed a band called Louise Blackwell and the French Set. She teamed up with highly-respected local musicians including Mark Simeon Ferguson on piano, Julian Ferraretto on violin, John Aué on double bass and Josh Baldwin on drums. The band and versions of it has played at many Adelaide Fringe festivals with shows such as A Night in Paris and To Paris with Love, and all major French-themed events.
A cabaret festival show, Love on the Left Bank, let Louise tell the story of French actress and singer Juliette Gréco, one of the most influential artists to emerge after World War II.