Lenne Klingaman is a classically- trained actor and singer/songwriter from San Francisco, CA. She grew up in the Mission District, an area renowned for producing talented musical storytellers, and started singing and recording with her father at the age of 4. She began creating her own “songs” around that same time, writing lyrics and poetry ever since. Her music spans genres from pop to americana, and draws on her theatrical past to spin stories in an evocative sonic landscape, blending immersive musical worlds with character-driven emotional arcs.
As an actress, she starred as Dawn in the Broadway production of Sara Bareilles’ hit musical WAITRESS. She previously originated the role of Dawn for the 1st National Tour of WAITRESS, touring the country for a year. She last starred in Anna Deveare Smith’s play LOVE ALL at La Jolla Playhouse about Billie Jean King. She also appeared Off-Broadway in The Underlying Chris at Second Stage.
Her debut musical release, The Heart is the Hunter, is a collection of beloved covers. The album is a classic vocal record in the tradition of Emmy Lou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, co-produced by Mark Christine and Steve Klingaman.
Lenne has been working on an album of original music, set for release this year. The album, PHOENIX, effectively chronicles the last 10 years of her life, seeing her through the crumbling of a love and the life she had built, followed by divorce, doubling down on artistic pursuits and their highs and lows, building a new life, finding new love, the heartache of miscarriage and loss, the trauma of an ectopic pregnancy that almost killed her, and becoming a new mom through IVF to baby Rhys in December of 2023 after a harrowing 5-year fertility journey amidst America’s reproductive rights breakdown. The songs tackle everything from wrestling one’s independence back after loss to the personal toll of America’s abortion bans and reproductive injustice. Lenne poured her heart into this album, into each lyric and note, displaying an immense amount of love and vulnerability from the journey that inspired it. Making this album is the search of finding oneself, struggling through suffering to find joy and to begin again. She hopes the album may be a source of solace and recognition for others as well.
On PHOENIX, Lenne and husband Christine produced and recorded these original 10 songs at their home studio in Astoria, NYC. John O’Reilly Jr is featured on drums, and her dad, Steve Klingaman, appears on a few songs on guitar. Bryan Fenkhart, Meg Toohey, Ilan Isakov, Nick Anton, Lee Nadel, Silversmith, Erica Terpening-Romeo, Jean-Luc Davis, and Rae Miller are guest musicians on the album. It is mixed by Travis Ference in LA and mastered by Nick Di Lorenzo of Panorama in Australia.
Her inspirations run the gamut and this record reflects that with a blend of acoustic and electronic drums inspired by Peter Gabriel and The National, and lush vocal harmonies reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac and Christine & the Queens. The first single off the album, title track “PHOENIX” is set for release this May.