The Bio
BIOGRAPHY
Joëlle was born in April 1958, in Winnipeg shortly after her parents emigrated from Brittany, France. She spent her adolescence in Courtenay on Vancouver Island, and, at the age of 16 left home for 3 years to travel around the world with a childhood friend fulfilling her intrigue of languages and world cultures. She returned to work in her family’s Island resort and was convinced her destiny was in the tourism business… until her brother bragged about her singing abilities to Vancouver’s City Stage director Ray Michal. A chance audition and a whirlwind stage debut in 1983 in the musical hit Piaf, Her Songs Her Loves, won her critical acclaim and 2 Jessie Awards after a one-year run of the show, one of the longest running musicals in Vancouver’s history. And as they say, the rest is history…
For more than 3 decades, Joëlle and her quartet (J. Douglas Dodd, Charlie Knowles, Tom Neville and Jack Stafford) toured 5 continents with both Joëlle Rabu in Concert and her musical drama Tonight…Piaf. In 1987, Joëlle was honoured as the third Canadian female to perform in China. She was also the first Canadian woman to record in the international language of Esperanto. As a polyglot, Joëlle embraced this language which offers commonality and a chance to communicate openly with many different cultures.
Throughout her musical career, she released 9 independent recordings (City Stage Cast Album Piaf Her Songs, Her Loves; Joëlle Rabu EP; Passport; Heart of the Night; Tonight…Piaf; Noël with/avec Joëlle; Hold Me, Full Circle and Maybe This Time). Her multilingual album Passport was nominated for a Juno.
In 1999, Joëlle was musically ‘twinned ‘with Malian singer Oumou Soumaré, when both women performed live in concert in each other’s country and were featured on the national television show Passeport-Musique which aired in more than 40 French-speaking countries.
Joëlle’s theatre credits include ‘Goodnight Disgrace’, ‘Don Messer’s Jubilee’ (for which she received another Jessie nod), ‘Cabaret’, ‘Irma la Douce’, ‘Lies & Legends, the Musical Stories of Harry Chapin’, ‘Rats’, ‘Hot Flashes’, ‘Marion Bridge’, ‘Murder on the Nile’, ‘Anything Goes’ and ‘A Countryside Christmas’.
During Vancouver’s World Expo ’86, Joëlle performed at the BC Pavilion for 4 consecutive weeks, as well as BC Place with the Vancouver Men’s Chorus and her personal highlight, with Danny Kay with the Peking Pops Orchestra and the Russian Children’s Choir on International Day of the Child.
In 1995, Joëlle was guest singer and co-lyricist for the Finale of Ottawa’s ‘Symphony of Sound and Light‘ show. composed by her longtime pianist J. Douglas Dodd. She also served as a creative consultant for both the English and French versions of this epic 47-minute recorded production which depicted Canada’s history via music and letters, and which ran every summer on Parliament Hill for 5 years.
Over the years, Joëlle has been honoured with numerous awards including the BC’s Touring Artist of the Year Award, Nanaimo’s Excellence in the Arts Cultural Award, and the distinguished Artiste Francophone de l’Ouest. Most recently, Joëlle was presented with the Queen’s 70th Jubilee Award by the BC Lieutenant Governor General for Arts and Music.
Joëlle has also performed with major symphony orchestras, notably the Phoenix, the Winnipeg, the Vancouver, the Vancouver Island, the Kamloops, the Peking Pops and the Nova Scotia symphony orchestras. In 2015, her son Nico Rhodes orchestrated Joëlle’s acclaimed show ‘Tonight…Piaf’ for full symphony.
As a BC artist and seamlessly bilingual, Joëlle wrote and directed 5 televised ‘Gala de la Chanson ‘ for BC’s French Cultural Centre in collaboration with CBC-Radio Canada as well a wrote and directed 2 Chant’ Ouest productions.
While living in Vancouver, Joëlle was spokesperson for the Liver Foundation and lent her name and voice annually in fundraising events for Aids Vancouver; the Vancouver Opera; the BCSCPA; Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion Tour; the CBC; the Blood Bank, Timmy’s Telethon; the Neil Squire Foundation, and the Variety Club.
After over a decade in Vancouver, she returned to her beloved Vancouver Island and settled in Nanaimo, where she immediately launched herself into supporting to community association in fundraising events. She lent her stage skills to fundraising events for the Vancouver Island Symphony, TheatreOne, Open Minds Open Windows, the Port Theatre, the United Way, the Maple Sugar Festival, Haven House and the Nanaimo Art Gallery. She continues to support Mental Health initiatives and Nanaimo’s Loaves and Fishes food distribution in her community.
During the mid-90’s, with an Early Childhood and a Social Phycology certification under her belt, Joëlle founded Nanaimo’s first bilingual children’s performance choir: The Young Island Voices. Joëlle has written & produced 5 bilingual youth musicals, and also recorded original festive music for preschoolers. Joëlle has penned 3 children’s books yet to be published: My Name is Sam (about the importance of nurturing one’s culture); The Day the Whales Could Not Stop Sneezing (the environmental impact of pollution), and I Love my Sister Really I Do (about sibling rivalry).
During the mid-2000’s, shift happened. Joëlle lost the desire to sing after several family deaths, including that of her husband of 30 years, Dusty Rhodes. In 2011, by chance, she was offered an opportunity to return to her original roots: tourism. She moved to Haida Gwaii where she was recruited to transform a highly contested trophy bear hunting lodge into a sustainable cultural tourism enterprise for the Haida Nation. During her 7 years on the remote northern coast, she immersed herself in tourism work, and kept her passion for languages and cultures alive as she discovered the art, language and songs of the Haida. She was adopted by the Matriarch Ildagwaay of the Taan’u Wolf Raven clan and was given her Haida name jaada K’aajuu Gaaya (girl with precious voice). In 2019 she was handed her regalia which she ‘danced’ at the Potlach held for the new Chief of K’aadasGa KiiGawaay. During this period on Haida Gwaii, Joëlle also met her second life-partner, the talented Haida artist Patrick Wesley. Tragically, he suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2018, from which he never recovered. Upon Patrick’s passing, Joëlle returned to Nanaimo with an aim to heal and find her footing again. The pandemic offered time for pause and reflection. Music started to enter her life again. It would be her son (and accompanist), Nico Rhodes, who would coax her back to the stage as a duo act.
Today, Joëlle immerses herself in singing, stage work, recording, coaching and volunteering. During the pandemic, Joëlle’s appetite for knowledge led her to online courses through Harvard University, as a passive student. She completed courses in Ethics and Social Justice, and in Environmental Tourism.
She keeps her hand in Indigenous cultural tourism projects, but lately she finds herself on the musical stage more and more with scheduled performances and mini-tours throughout Canada and Mexico.
In September of 2022, Joëlle launched her new album Maybe This Time; a concept album produced by her son Nico. The album features songs in English, French and Spanish, ranging in style with sparse piano or guitar accompaniment, to full symphonic orchestrations. The 10-song CD is accompanied by a 26-page introspective, and very candid, biographical account of the music in her life and her life in music.
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