Patricia Kaas

Chanteuse Patricia Kaas entered the world in France’s Lorraine region and took to the stage while still a child; by age 11 she had secured a regular slot at Sarrebrucken’s Rumpelkammer Club in Germany, gradually shaping a voice that refreshed the French chanson tradition through infusions of pop, blues, and jazz. Her breakthrough arrived in 1987 with the national hit “Mademoiselle Chante le Blues,” after which she received the Female Newcomer of the Year honor at the Victoires de la Musique. The debut album Mademoiselle Chante quickly attained platinum certification in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, while its successor Scene de Vie held the top position on the French charts for three months. Throughout most of the early 1990s she circled the planet on tour, becoming the first Western-born female artist to appear in Hanoi after the close of the Vietnam conflict. Je te dis vous arrived in 1993, followed the next year by her initial concert recording, Tour de charme. After finishing the 1997 Phil Ramone-produced Dans Ma Chair, she mounted a run of shows at Paris’s Olympia Theatre that generated the live album Rendez-vous; her first release on Sony Classical, Christmas in Vienna, surfaced in 1999.