Pauline Frechette

Pauline Frechette, who has also issued recordings under the name Raven Kane, works as a vocalist and tunesmith. Between the late 1980s and the early 2010s she contributed session vocals to projects by Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen, and Ringo Starr. Her catalog of compositions encompasses material for pop ensembles such as the Carpenters together with assorted stage productions. In 2018 she stepped forward as a solo performer and entered the Billboard jazz and classical rankings.

Born into a lineage of musicians, Frechette counts Josef Vezina—founder of the Quebec Symphony—as her great-grandfather, Raoul Vezina, who directed a marching band, as her grandfather, and Frigon Louis Frechette, a theater and concert organist, as her father. Her spouse, composer, arranger, and conductor David Campbell (father of alternative rock musician Beck), and their daughter, singer and songwriter Alyssa Suede, complete the immediate musical circle. Raised beyond Chicago’s city limits, she performed on her father’s radio broadcast, played violin with the Youth Symphony, and entered piano contests, securing multiple victories. During her teenage years she traveled across Europe with the Showteens, after which she relocated to London, appearing in clubs, writing scores for theater companies, and training as an actor at the London School of Dramatic Art and the Bristol Old Vic. Upon her return to the United States she enrolled at the American Conservatory of Music in Indiana and captured the Farwell Award from Chicago’s Musicians Club of Women in three consecutive years.

She next settled in New York City, sustaining herself through jingle composition, pop songwriting for the Carpenters, screen music for Infinity Factory and Mind Games, and live club performances. Under the Raven Kane alias she partnered with Klaus Netzle on the 1984 Teldec Records album Silicon Valley, a set of theatrical songs issued in Germany, which she then promoted on a national theater tour. Her additional work as composer and lyricist encompasses the rock opera Artaria along with the musicals The Adventures of Denton the Dragon and Survival of the Heart.

Bridging classic cabaret and modern vocal jazz, Frechette issued her first solo collection, Colors of My Heart, through Viscount Music in 2018 under her own name. The album, which includes a featured appearance by Stanley Clarke, opened at number three on Billboard’s classical and classical crossover charts while also landing inside the Top Ten of both the jazz and traditional jazz lists. Twelve months afterward she delivered a follow-up solo release, An Intimate Story, comprising original neo-classical works for solo piano.