OFF Jazz | Blanche Baillargeon Welcomes You to Her Nest

In the 2000s, Blanche Baillargeon made a name for herself with DJ Champion’s G Strings. Since then, she has also distinguished herself with Christine Tassan’s gypsy jazz and Misses Satchmo jazz, but few music lovers are aware of her personal work.

Well… she wasn’t well known until last spring, when her new project Le Nid sparked things off with unsuspecting music lovers, including our dear colleague Sylvain Cormier, who was full of praise for her. In fact, Blanche Baillargeon has been making her compositional language public since 2015, and her recent opus Le Nid was the main material for this concert presented at Le Ministère.

The rustle of the forest, the flight of birds, the light in the landscape, freedom, happiness, malaise, hope and empathy are all sources of inspiration for these mostly ethereal and gentle jazz songs. Pianist Chantale Morin, drummer Sacha Daoud, bass clarinettist Guillaume Bourque and flautist Alex Dodier (who can play sax in other contexts), all excellent musicians with extensive jazz experience, accompany the double bassist in this Off Jazz context.

The music here is a composite of songs expressed in French (lyrics by master poet Patrice Desbiens) and Brazilian Portuguese, including the cover of Chico Buarque’s “Samba e Amor,” and other original jazz-samba/bossa nova-inspired proposals. Blanche Baillargeon’s musical references are clearly jazz, but they are also tinged with Brazilian and Cape Verdean music that is part of the global collective imagination, and with French chanson that also draws on the romantic and modern music of the Western classical tradition.

The result is voluptuous, enveloping chamber jazz, harmonically and melodically rich, and a pleasure to listen to. No peak performance is required of each performer or improviser, rather the composer seeks to create a coherent, cohesive whole around her works. Personally, I preferred the non-Brazilian moments of this repertoire on the Sunday evening program, as I sometimes had the impression of a certain disparity between these noble tropical inspirations of the 60s-70s-80s and the rest of her original compositions, which are fresher and… more original.

Photo credit: Jean-Pierre Dubé