Additional Information
Earlier this year, Ingrid St-Pierre released a new EP, Cinq chansons au piano droit, in which she reinterprets five songs from her repertoire with simplicity and finesse, in a wish to return to essentials. A heartfelt, uncluttered album, adorned with delicate arrangements and beautifully interpreted by the artist, it allows us to rediscover her songs from another angle. Filled with softness and lightness, yet touching on themes that are sometimes a little heavier, the EP is a touching, introspective journey where silences take on their full meaning. We owe the subtle arrangements to Joseph Marchand, who sensitively co-produced the album.
At the same time, the singer-songwriter spoils us with Ingrid St-Pierre: Seule au piano, a solo show she imagined for the occasion. In it, she freely revisits her songs in their pure, original expression, stripped of artifice so as to better appreciate the details, in the image of the album.
Marilyn Bouchard caught up with her just before her return to Montreal at Usine C, on April 16, to ask her a few questions.
PAN M 360: Would you say that this refined album was born of a desire to return to simplicity, to the essential?
Ingrid St-Pierre: I wanted to unlearn the songs. To return to their essence. To let the tiny take up all the space. To magnify silences. To make a piano note immense. A rustle of clothing, a flock of geese in the autumn outside and the wind in the magnolia.
PAN M 360: What did you want to share with this EP?
Ingrid St-Pierre: The simple expression of a song. The first impulse, and the essence.
PAN M 360: Has this enabled you to reappropriate your repertoire in a different way?
Ingrid St-Pierre: Creating a solo show gave me the opportunity to go back into my song demos before going into the studio. To reconnect with what they were before.
PAN M 360: Why did you choose these 5 songs?
Ingrid St-Pierre: I hesitated for a long time, right up to the last minute. I wanted to reinterpret everything, but I had to make choices. I wanted to see how I could reappropriate these stories. How they were going to live piano/voice.
PAN M 360: It’s a very intimate album. Would you say that your creative life and your intimate life run parallel?
Ingrid St-Pierre: My intimate life certainly feeds my creative life. The more I’m on edge, the more I reveal myself, the more I’m shaken up, the better I write. It’s when I’m shaken that I’m able to write.
PAN M 360: How has your relationship with your instrument, the piano, evolved over the course of your career?
Ingrid St-Pierre: I’m a self-taught pianist, with little basic training. I’ve learned to forge my artistic and pianistic identity by juggling my technical limits. I have to admit that I myself am often much more moved by a musician who transmits emotions to me than by great technical challenges.
PAN M 360: What are your musical inspirations at the moment?
Ingrid St-Pierre: I really listen to everything! A lot of instrumental music lately.
PAN M 360: What inspires you when it comes to thinking up new pieces, or rethinking old ones?
Ingrid St-Pierre: I like to draw inspiration from ordinary moments. I like to put everyday fragments under the microscope.
PAN M 360: Sometimes you adopt electro and dance tones (like on Sac Banane with Heartstreets), sometimes more melancholy. We get the impression that with each of your albums, you’re on a different quest. Is this your way of reinventing yourself?
Ingrid St-Pierre: I love improbable collaborations. I don’t think I’m looking for myself artistically, but I give myself the freedom to exist. I embrace every musical impulse that moves me. Free to be, I feel truer to myself.
PAN M 360: Which brings me to: where do you want to go with your next album?
Ingrid St-Pierre: It’s still a surprise! I’m waiting to see what the new songs will inspire!
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