When Stella Heath walks on stage to tell the story of Billie Holiday, she wears a gardenia in her hair, an homage to Holiday’s familiar appearance. Backed by her 10-piece band, she presents an evening of songs associated with Holiday. Between songs, she adds historical storytelling to enhance Holiday’s musical legacy.
“There is a narrative arc to the show, and it changes with every performance,” Heath said. “I want it to be alive, so I try to keep it very fluid and the show changes every time we do it.”
Heath debuted The Billie Holiday Project in 2019. In 2025 Heath and co-founder pianist Neil Fontano scaled the band up from a 5-piece to a 10-piece, with arrangements by Fontano and other band members.
In the presentation, she includes one contemporary number, written in the swing style that Holiday made her own. “I decided to include ‘These Tears,’ a song by Vilray Blair Bolles, because I felt it was important to have something that ties these old songs into the present day,” Heath said. “I went to see Bolles perform in 2018. I was working on the Billie Holiday Project and he was starting his duo, Rachel & Vilray. He’s one of my favorite songwriters. He told me he wrote [‘These Tears’] for Billie, so I asked him if I could sing it and record it.”
The arrangements for the songs, including standards like “What A Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Them There Eyes,” don’t stray too far from Holiday’s. The band leaves Heath plenty of room to play with the rhythms and melodies in the manner of Holiday. For the Freight show, Heath will bring along the full band and a few swing dancers to enhance the performance.
“The dancers add a wonderful cinematic aspect to the show,” she said. “The audiences love it. So much of the music Billie played was out of the Swing Era. At any of her live shows, early on in her career, there would likely have been dancers there.”
Heath often closes the show with “Strange Fruit,” the most controversial song Holiday ever recorded. Written by Abel Meeropol and inspired by the lynching of two Black teenagers, it includes the lines, “Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees …”
After Holiday made the decision to sing the song, it affected her life. She was hunted by the U.S. government, and the FBI set her up many times for drug busts.
“I connect strongly with [Holiday’s] music and her way of singing,” Heath said. “She gets to the emotional core of a song. She was also set apart for me because of her decision to sing ‘Strange Fruit.’ That very act made her a historical figure, and the song still speaks today. It’s unnerving that it’s becoming more and more relevant to sing in this current era.
“I wanted this project to say something about how far we’ve come, or haven’t come, and that song sums it up,” Heath continued. “It’s a scary time and a time of great change. That song needed to be sung in Billie’s time, and it needs to be sung today.”
Heath and Fontano recently went into the studio with the band to record For Billie, to document some of the tunes they feature in the live show.
“This album is borne out of years of performing this music live,” Heath said. “We have tried through the years to record it, but I am pretty picky about things, so we’ve performed the show for many years, with no recorded material.”
For Billie was cut with the band paired down to eight players, with Fontano as musical director and primary arranger, and Heath producing. “We played everything live,” Heath said. “It was important to me and Neil that we keep the energy we have when we are playing live for an audience. I think the album truly captures our band’s sound.”
Heath released the album on her own Matterhorn Records. “Creating a label has been a learning curve,” she said, “but it’s not that different from bandleading. I certainly have a lot on my plate all the time.”
Stella Heath and her band will perform The Billie Holiday Project on Saturday, June 13, 7:30pm at The Freight, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley. 510.644.2020. thefreight.org. Listen to ‘For Billie’ at: stellaheathmusic.bandcamp.comand stellaheathmusic.com.
