When Camille LeBlanc needed to get a nine-foot Steinway into her second home in the hills of Inverness Ridge after moving there in 2012, she solicited the help of her piano coach, who noticed something about the new space immediately.
“You realize you have a concert hall here,” he told her. “I told him I did,” says LeBlanc, a serial entrepreneur turned concert promoter. The Inverness house, designed by well-known Sea Ranch architect William Turnbull Jr. in the late ’80s, boasted 35-foot ceilings and a great room clad in redwood — perfect for intimate concerts.
But before LeBlanc started Music and Minds (formerly called Every Blue Moon Concerts) in Inverness, she experimented with the idea of a monthly music salon in her Berkeley Hills home, where she would host as many as 10 professional pianists from the conservatory at a time. These sessions would continue into the early morning and soon caught the attention of neighbors. “People would drive up the hill and ask me where that music came from and if they could get on ‘the list,’ ” she says. “And that was that.”
Moving the concept to Inverness was an obvious choice and she soon began to attract audiences eager to hear world-class musicians in jazz, classical, experimental, world music, improv and more. “I go out to hear live music but all I could hear in Marin was bluegrass, country or Americana. I love those genres, but it is everywhere out here,” she says. “For my concerts, I am quite specific about tending toward genres that you otherwise just wouldn’t get access to out here.”
Shows include musicians like Sabir Khan, an Indian sarangi player who fills stadiums in his home country; Ian Maksin, who sings music in 37 languages (December 28); and the Abeo String Quartet, who performed at the Kennedy Center earlier this year (December 7 and 8); even Oakland’s T Sisters have played the venue. “It’s the rare opportunity to hear people who you normally would not hear in this region, and who are critically acclaimed or are about to take off career-wise because of their musical abilities,” she says. And now fireside chat speakers on various topics are also presented (November’s chat saw former EU ambassador Andrew Standley discuss the U.S. presidential election).
LeBlanc admits there is also a personal reason to do the series. “I have world-class musicians in my living room and I don’t have to jump on the road to drive into San Francisco and then drive back,” she says, adding that the key to producing Music and Minds is to keep it fun and easy. “I promised myself I would do this series if I could be out on the land until 3 or 4 p.m., come back to the house, open up the doors, let the musicians load in, do the sound check and then let 60 people in. I’ve got it dialed in, and people really appreciate the shows.”
As for how she draws musicians who sometimes play Carnegie Hall to a ridge in Inverness, LeBlanc says it’s all about the curation and like attracting like. “Any musician who I would have would listen to any of the other musicians in terms of the genre; they would recognize that these are deep musicians,” she says. The best part is that the performers really enjoy the smaller audiences and the space. “I’m matching the caliber.”
