Tim Bruno Interviews Phoebe Legere on NPR's Radio Catskill About Her Kindness Is The New Green Initiative & Just Released Song "2 PIANOS"

 

When Phoebe Legere describes her art, 

she doesn’t talk only about notes, 

instruments, or performance. 

She talks about floating pianos, recycled 

costumes dredged from 

Venetian canals, and children’s 

sneakers that make music with every step.

The visionary singer, composer, 

and multi-instrumentalist — who’s 

been compared to everyone from Beethoven 

to Edith Piaf — 

has always blurred the lines between music, 

theater, and activism. 

On August 31, she brings it all together with the 

premiere of her new film The Gender Symphony 

at the 

Phoenicia Playhouse.

“I was the director of the film. I’m in the film. 

I designed all of the costumes from junk that I

 found floating in the canals of Venice,” 

Legere said. 

“I also did the animation for the film. 

It’s called The Gender Symphony and it is about 

a man and a woman suddenly magically 

switching places.”

The project reflects her lifelong fascination 

with the differences — and striking similarities — 

between men and women. “It is the basis 

of almost all of art and music. 

And of course, it is the engine for love, 

the greatest of human activities,” she said.

Legere describes her style as eco-magic — 

art that reuses and reinvents, turning the 

discarded into something visionary. 

That philosophy flows through the film’s

 theme song, “2 Pianos,”released as a single 

last week. Inspired by the sinking 

of the Titanic, where two grand pianos 

were seen floating among icebergs and 

wreckage, Legere transformed the image into a 

metaphor for art’s survival in the face of tragedy.

“Art persists in the greatest tragedy,

in the greatest confusion. 

Art does not die,” she said.

Her work is never just about performance. 

As executive director of the 

Foundation for New American Art, Legere 

helps bring free music and art education 

to children in low-income communities 

across New York City and Poughkeepsie. 

That work even inspired one of her inventions: 

the “Sneakers of Samothrace,” musical shoes 

that create rhythm through tiny movements 

of the foot. Originally designed to 

encourage children with 

disabilities to walk again, the sneakers 

now feature in her compositions — 

including “2 Pianos.”

The film is already making waves abroad, 

winning 19 international festival prizes. 

Meanwhile, the single is gaining 

traction on Spotify playlists in France, 

Haiti, Belgium, and Quebec. 

But Legere is quick to connect her 

success to a bigger purpose.

“We are living in an extraordinary 

political moment,” she said.

“But I don’t believe in despair.

What I believe in is creativity,

and I believe that we can

        sing our way 

        forward together.”

Her message is simple, but radical: 

“Creativity and kindness 

are the most radical form of power.”

The Gender Symphony premieres 

Sunday, August 31, at the Phoenicia Playhouse.

TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE 

INTERVIEW, PLEASE VISIT:

https://wjffradio.org/phoebe-legere-brings-eco-magic-to-phoenicia/

Image Credit: PhoebeLegere.com

Rave Reviews for Phoebe Legere's New Song "2 PIANOS" * PLUS: NPR Radio Interview Set for Aug. 26 Tuesday!

Phoebe Legere's Latest Song "2 PIANOS" is lighting up a wide variety of SPOTIFY Playlists!

The beautiful song, composted/performed/produced by Phoebe Legere is getting great reviews:

 "2 Pianos...spirited, dynamic energy.  We love the way it is both charming and deep..." - UpHere Magazine, Aug. 19, 2025

 "a touching song ...classic pop... poetry vibrant with emotion... imbued with a light touch of madness and a magnificent sensitivity." - Boulimique de Musique

And, Let Everyone Know:

Phoebe Legere will be on RADIO CATSKILL WJFF 90.5 FM at 10:45 on Tuesday, August 26th talking with Tim Bruno. (NPR) 

Please call in! Light up the phones!  Sullivan County! 

Online: https://wjffradio.org/  There's a link to listen live at the upper left banner on the site.

Call: 845-482-4141

Media Covers Phoebe Legere Retrospective at The Bundy Museum: Evanescent Landscapes/Vanishing Women

 On June 3 The Bundy Museum in Binghamton, New York opened RETROSPECTIVE: The Art of Phoebe Legere. The Gallery Opening was followed by a Concert in the Bundy Theater featuring original music by Multi-Disciplinary Artist Legere. 

NBC and ABC news affiliates carried interviews and features on Phoebe leading up to the Opening.

Watch the News Channel 34 feature here:

https://youtu.be/Fw3BafPqqVw

Earlier in the day, Phoebe appeared on NPR

"The Heart of the East End," Hosted by Award-Winning Journalist Gianna Volpe:

WLIW-FM 88.3.fm 

Listen to the interview here:

https://www.wliw.org/radio/2022/06/03/heart-of-the-east-end-june-3rd-2022/

Phoebe Legere is the first artist and musician to highlight and document the missing Native Women and Girls from North America who have vanished. 

“Across the U.S. and Canada, native women and girls are taken, vanishing at an alarming rate,” said Legere.

According to the group, NATIVE HOPE. Org, thousands of women and girls have gone missing in the past few years, but there is No Single Source For Tracing and compiling the data on these cases.

 

The Urban Indian Health Institute, a research and advocacy organization focused on health in Indigenous communities, found that while the National Crime Information Center tallied nearly 6,000 reports of missing Indigenous women and girls in 2016, only 116 cases had been logged into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, database.

 

“My series VANISHING WOMEN is dedicated to raising awareness for this horrible, staggering negligence,” said Legere.

 

To learn more:

Urban Indian Health Institute:  U I H I . org

 

MMIWG  Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls:   nativehope.org

 

Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women:  CSVANW.org

 

Retrospective: The Art & Music of Phoebe Legere * June 3 * Bundy Museum * NPR Interview * Bundy Theater * Amazing Online Auction

 

­ ­ ­ RETROSPECTIVE: The ART of PHOEBE LEGERE Evanescent Landscapes/Vanishing Women BUNDY MUSEUM of ART 133 Main St. Binghamton, NY 13905   Art Opening                                                June 3  6-9 pm at the Bundy Museum Concert First Friday                              June 3  8 pm at the Bundy Theater Amazing Online Auction                    June 3 To Benefit Phoebe's Foundation 'LIVE' Interview on NPR                        June 3  9-11 am WLIW-FM 88.3                                                                                                                                         Phoebe Legere (Abenaki/Cajun) is a multidisciplinary artist whose paintings of Binghamton area landscapes and Native American subjects will be on view at the Bundy Museum of Art June 3rd – August 7.    The Bundy Museum of Art is located at 127-129 Main Street, in Binghamton. Phone: 607- 772-9179. Website: bundymuseum.org   Legere is a versatile painter who works in oils, acrylic, mixed media, resin and egg tempera, creating semi-abstract works inspired by her passion for anatomy and landscape.    “Phoebe Legere is a virtuoso. Legere’s line is meticulous, incisive, sensuous, and vibrant. Her works are politically engaged and inspire conversations about women’s issues, diversity, inclusiveness, cultural equity, Native American issues, respect for the environment, and the volatility of consciousness.” – Linda Nochlin    Legere’s paintings are deeply contemporary; each painting is a comment on the validity of handmade painting in a world where we are increasingly dominated by machines.    “Machine-made, mechanistic art and music have colonized and occupied our minds. The only cure, the only way to restore the health of the Human Soul, is to return to the well spring of all human endeavor: Art and Music,” according to Legere.  Visit phoebelegereart.com to learn more.   “The Art of Phoebe Legere” opens at the Bundy Museum on Friday, June 3rd, and she will be presenting a concert of her original songs that night at 8 pm in the Bundy Theater. The same day she will launch an online auction to benefit The Foundation for New American Art 501(c)(3).   Legere’s music has been compared to “Edith Piaf, Jerry Lee Lewis and Maria Callas” (NY Times) and Frank Zappa (Billboard). Studs Terkel, during a radio broadcast profile of Phoebe on National Public Radio said it best: “She is an American Original.” Legere studied music at Juilliard and painting at Vassar College.   Some of Phoebe Legere’s noteworthy milestones include the following:   -Legere is a grant recipient of a New York State Council of the Arts award for her musical about the Native American Holocaust of New England, “Queen of New England”   -Legere received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her musical epic poem about Water issues,  “The Waterclown”   - She is an Acker Award recipient for her musical “Hello, Madame President” about the first African American female president of the U.S.   -David Bowie chose Phoebe Legere for the support act spot on his National Tour    -Legere has appeared on NBC, CBS, ABC, HBO, NPR, PBS    -The 2022 “Best of Manhattan” Entertainment Award was presented to Legere   -Legere co-starred on Nickelodeon’s “Naked Brothers Band”   -Legere scored and starred in the most popular cult movie of all time- “Toxic Avenger’   -As the Creator, Executive Producer, Featured Performer, Host, Writer, and Set Designer, Legere’s educational children’s TV show, “The Color Wheel” has been viewed by tens of thousands   -Legere can be seen playing & singing in “Ghostbusters 2” and can be seen on the “Golden Anniversary Ghostbusters Collectors” DVD   -Legere has collaborated with friends and colleagues considered to be the most creative people of our time: Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Johnny Depp, Hunter Thompson, Allen Ginsberg and Billy Joel to name a few…   -Legere has written, produced and performed on 17 albums of original songs.    Follow her on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook and Twitter. www.instagram/phoebelegere   Proceeds from sales of her paintings & music go to fund the Foundation for the New American Art, a nonprofit that brings free art and music to at-risk children of low-income communities. “After the financial crisis of 2008 they eliminated art & music to children in most NYC public schools. I believe free access to art & music is every child’s birthright. That’s why I founded the Let Every Child Sing Chorus, Paintbrushes Not Guns and Music Teachers Without Borders which offers free art & music lessons to underserved children,” says executive director Legere.   Legere’s charity was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for their important work bringing cultural equity to communities and recently received a New York Community Trust grant to carry on the Foundation’s work in arts education.  ####   For additional information please contact Xander at phoebelegereart@gmail.com      ­ ­ --  Visit PhoebeLegereArt.com to learn more.

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Visit PhoebeLegereArt.com to learn more.

Phoebe Legere  (Kennebec Abenaki/Cajun) is a versatile painter who works in oils, acrylic, mixed media, resin and egg tempera, creating semi-abstract works inspired by her passion for anatomy and landscape. Legere uses experimental combinations of new and ancient mediums. “Phoebe Legere is a virtuoso. The speed, lyricism & dexterity of her brushstrokes express truly Herculean Creativity,” said Linda Nochlin.

 

Legere’s line is meticulous, incisive, sensuous, and vibrant.  Her works are politically engaged and inspire conversations about women’s issues, diversity, inclusiveness, cultural equity, Native American issues, respect for the environment, and the volatility of consciousness. 

Legere’s paintings are deeply contemporary; each painting is a comment on the validity of handmade painting in a world where we are increasingly dominated by machines.  “Machine-made, mechanistic art and music have colonized and occupied our minds. The only cure, the only way to restore the health of the Human Soul, is to return to the well spring of all human endeavor: Art and Music,” said Legere.

Further acquaintance with Legere’s biography and the inspirations behind her oeuvre reveal an artist who has deftly marshaled passion, intellectual rigor, and a lifetime of solid discipline in both music & art to create a genuinely original body of work. Legere studied music at Juilliard and art at Vassar College.  She holds degrees in art, performance art, and a master’s degree in film scoring. 

From a young age, her parents took Phoebe Legere to museums and galleries where her artist mother, a famous Art Director and her father, painter, art teacher and member of the “Boston Expressionists” group, showed her the works of Modern Painters and introduced her to  nonrepresentational methods of picturing reality. Her parents both studied with Hans Hoffman in Provincetown. There they met Larry Rivers. Rivers later became Phoebe’s painting teacher, introducing her to all the major New York painters from Robert Rauschenberg to Jasper Johns to Dennis Oppenheim, to Louise Bourgeois, to Donald Judd. As a teenager she had formative friendships with Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Bowie, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Beard, Hunter Thompson, Jack Smith and Andy Warhol as well as brilliant illustrator Hilary Knight, with whom she is featured in a 2018 HBO Special. 

Legere has a painting studio in Manhattan. She incorporates iconic architectural buildings and threatened landscapes into paintings that also feature human bodies leaping, dancing, and dreaming. She is represented by galleries in multiple cities in the US and has exhibited regularly in various venues throughout the US, EU and Brazil, and has received prestigious art awards in the US and Germany. Her pieces are owned by collectors and museums worldwide. 

From her experiences opening for David Bowie on his Sound & Vision tour, to her work as an Underground Movie Star, including her soon to be released starring role, playing herself, as a multi-disciplinary artist in a movie about YADDO, the legendary artist residency. The movie is called “The Masterpiece” directed by internationally acclaimed Brazilian artist Gustavo Von Ha. 

Legere’s life experiences, her appetite for truth and beauty, and her extraordinary friendships with the most creative personalities of our time have been synthesized into an art practice of astonishing range and breadth.  

 

 

ROLLING HILLS RADIO, WRFA & NPR LOVE PHOEBE LEGERE

PHOEBE LEGERE played to a standing room only crowd this weekend at SHAWBUCKS in Western, NY while the cameras rolled and NPR mics captured every word and melodious guitar chord for their audiences listening at home and elsewhere.

NPR broadcast the event LIVE and will continue to play the show for listeners throughout the next week. TV broadcasts will offer Phoebe's show this upcoming week culminating in special programming on Sunday.

The performer played her original songs on a Martin Guitar to a spellbound audience. Phoebe occasionally picked up her accordion for the roaring crowd. 

Phoebe Legere is the Voice of the Wilderness. Phoebe honors the values of farmers, fisherman and other great American workers, craftsman and makers throughout our great land.

The musician-composer-artist reached #18 on the Americana Charts with her latest album HEART OF LOVE. 

Take a listen to a pre-performance broadcast on ROLLING HILLS RADIO: 
https://soundcloud.com/wrfaradio/arts-on-fire-phoebe-legere-previews-upcoming-rolling-hills-radio-appearance

https://soundcloud.com/wrfaradio/arts-on-fire-phoebe-legere-previews-upcoming-rolling-hills-radio-appearance
https://soundcloud.com/wrfaradio/arts-on-fire-phoebe-legere-previews-upcoming-rolling-hills-radio-appearance

MORE GREAT INK FOR ROLLING HILLS RADIO PRESENTS PHOEBE LEGERE

Tonight at Shawbucks! Rolling Hills Radio Presents Phoebe Legere! 
The event will be broadcast on NPR Radio!

Says Phoebe, "The Crawdiddies and I will be live on NPR tomorrow... syndicated on many NPR stations around the country including Ithaca/ Rochester this Saturday afternoon, February 1.  It’s #roots #Americana  #blues #original #singersongwriter with me on #Martin guitar and Bernie on Dobro and Banjo Jay on bass and Washboard Dave."

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