JUNO Award Winning Jazz Artist Ranee Lee Reimagines Celine Dion Songs on New Album

Ranee Lee is one of Canada's premiere jazz vocalists. She embodies jazz and her career has been a relentless pursuit to see where the music would take her, what she could learn, what she could pass on, how she could take new and exciting paths. She accepts challenges and constantly redefines herself.

With her new album Because You Loved Me she once again accepts a challenge; this time with reimagined beautifully insightful new arrangements in a jazz style of the music of Quebec's superstar Celine Dion. In the end, you don't have to be a fan of Celine to love this album. But if you feel the beauty of a melody, the power of a song, the power of love, that's what we believe Ranee Lee has captured with this powerful new recording.

The recording features nine tracks of some of Dion's greatest hits including: "My Heart Will Go On," "I'm Alive," All By Myself," the title track "Because You Loved Me," "Nature Boy" and "The Prayer" which is being released as a single with the hope of inspiring those to pray for peace in the world and the people of Ukraine. "Every song on this new recording, "Because You Loved Me" holds meaningful messages. I hope that you find yours when listening to them," says Ranee.

Ranee Lee's impressive discography is filled with masterworks. In April 2010, Ranee won the JUNO Award, Canada's GRAMMY Award for " Vocal Jazz Album Of The Year for the recording of Ranee Lee Lives UPSTAIRS. In 1994 and again in1995, she received the Top Canadian Female Jazz Vocalist Award presented by Jazz Report magazine. Her album I Thought About You was the first nominated recording for a Juno Award in the Best Mainstream Jazz category in 1995. In March 2003 Ranee received a JUNO nomination for "Maple Groove: Songs From The Great Canadian Songbook," featuring selections from some of Canada's greatest songwriters.

Throughout her career Ranee has performed with many jazz notables, including Clark Terry, Bill Mayes, Herbie Ellis, Red Mitchell, Milt Hinton, Oliver Jones, Terry Clarke, John Bunch, George Arvanitas, to name a few. Lee is no stranger to the road; she has toured with her own group throughout America and has played at many prestigious jazz festivals, most recently the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Canada Capital festival in Sao Paulo. Ranee has toured throughout all of Spain and France, and other Scandinavian countries, as well as England.

For outstanding service to jazz education, at the twenty-first IAJE conference in January 1994, Ranee received the International Association of Jazz Educators Award. As an educator, Ranee has been part of the University of Laval faculty in Quebec City and The Schulich School of Music of McGill University faculty for over twenty years, where she received an award for appreciation and contribution to the development of the McGill Jazz Program.

Ranee Lee's incredible longevity as an artist is a tribute to her extraordinary talent. She is a force to be reckoned due to her ability to constantly reinvent herself. And with the release of Because You Loved Me, she proves it once again.

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