Interviews – Page 42

Air Conditionné heralds the first release from up-and-coming artist ROM1, the moniker of Romain Peynichou who left his native France to immerse himself in the unique urban fabric of Montréal. Characterised by raw vulnerability and adventurous sonic exploration, his album plays much like a sonic coming of age story. We sat with Romain to learn how it all came to be.

PAN M 360 : Hey ROM1, thanks a lot for being with us today. You’ve just had your first release and it’s clear to anyone who listens to your record that it was a very personal undertaking. There’s a lot going here and so perhaps we can get started at the beginning of this project?

ROM1 : My goal really was to find my own voice. After playing in bands for a long time as a drummer, making other people’s music, it was a time to get alone in the studio and have my music being made with like no compromises.

PAN M 360 : So did you have some idea of what that voice was to begin with or was it really a process of discovery?

ROM1 : Well, there was a lot of exploration for sure. I kind of knew where I was going in the way of having my references and a particular sound in mind, but there was definitely a lot of exploration to get there. And a lot of learning for sure.

PAN M 360 : Can you tell us a bit about your background as a musician?

ROM1 : Yeah, I started playing drums really early because my brother was playing guitar. You know I got into a lot of classic rock music, soul music, always kind of from a drumming perspective, but early on too I was hooked on really nice songs. Some Bill Withers tunes, some Zeppelin riffs, a lot of Chili Peppers as a teenager. And then as I went more deeply into listening to music I discovered more dense, more intricate productions and I think that’s where it really hit for me.

PAN M 360 : What kinds of bands were you playing in?

ROM1 : So a lot of funk bands, rock bands and some jazz. I was at jazz school for a bit.

PAN M 360 : It’s interesting to hear you say that because I felt that even if your album doesn’t necessarily touch on those influences, it was made by someone who has experience in a lot of different styles. But at the end of the day it’s a producer-songwriter album.

ROM1 : Yeah, that’s the music that I love. I love funk music, I love rock music, I love jazz, but the one music that really resonated with me has always been more produced, personal, vulnerable, intimate, more like headphone music rather than live music.

PAN M 360 : Was there some sort of sound in Montréal that you were trying to find?

ROM1 : Yeah, absolutely. One of the reasons why I moved to Montréal was for Half Moon Run. In my high school years they were one of my favourite bands and they just represented this city for me. The Dark Eyes album was so impactful just in terms of the songs and the vibe and I got really attached to that record for a bit. And then coming here I listened to a lot of Montréal made music, a lot of Montréal producers, and the feeling of knowing them from afar, sometimes knowing them personally, seeing them around is something that I really value. It makes me feel like I’m part of the city and I think it’s really beautiful to have art that I love around me.

PAN M 360 : And how did the Air Conditionné kind of aesthetic manifest itself?

ROM1 : I had this very specific walk when I was working on the music very deeply, from my old apartment to the studio that I was working in. And yeah, it was just on this walk that I did every day that I noticed different things and I started to see a lot of air conditioning units. And that image just stuck with me. Then as I thought about a lot of the lyrics and the themes started to unveil themselves, it was a lot about growing up and what the process of being conditioned to be a certain way brings about. I started therapy kind of when I was deep in writing lyrics so a lot of that came through and I liked that the title Air Conditionné had different layers of meanings.

PAN M 360 : For me the album title was suggestive of work, the work always needing to be done on ourselves in a way. And that we’re building and repairing and installing ourselves kind of all the time.

ROM1 : Yeah, I really like that too. It wasn’t my original one but it definitely works. For me it was about how an air conditioner regulates the temperature of a room and you know regulates the atmosphere. And for me that’s a lot of what music does also, you know, like listening to a lot of music in public spaces and restaurants and bars and seeing how different music can impact a room in different ways. The power that the music that you choose has. That for me is very interesting. Air Conditionné could be interpreted in different ways. It can be light but there’s also a deep meaning there and I also liked the idea of an era of time. In French we say “l’ère du temps” also, which means just a period of time, which I thought was also cool.

PAN M 360: Was there any reason in particular the whole record is in French, for someone who is perfectly bilingual and kind of at ease with both cultures?

ROM1 : Well I started writing in English at first. The very first demos were in English and it just didn’t resonate with me as much. And then as I was working on the music, the Hubert Lenoir record came out, PICTURA DE IPSE : Musique directe, which is the record that completely changed everything for me in terms of what I wanted to do. I was writing in French already a bit but that just sealed the deal. There’s still some parts of the record, especially some voice memos and everything that are in English, because English is a huge part of my life, it’s about 50-50. But because a lot of the record is about me growing up and what that was like, that was all in French, so it made sense for me to do that.

PAN M 360: Can you tell us more about the composition process exactly? Your songs have a lot of intricate detail and moving parts and I’m wondering how you worked it all out.

ROM1 : A lot of the songs started with a synth patch that I really like, a bass line, sometimes even just drums. I’m not in any way a pianist or a guitar player. I don’t really compose music. It was about creating textures and creating grooves and making those landscapes and then making a song at the end, with the parts and dynamics and lyrics. It wasn’t really like sitting down at a piano, figuring out a chord progression, a melody over it, and then recording it and adding stuff. I was really interested in the production part of the process and that’s what I had the most fun with. And then the lyrics and the melodies came pretty much at the end.

PAN M 360 : I imagine this whole process must have been very cathartic almost, but from start to finish, did you feel you underwent a sort of transformation to bring your vision to life? You said you wanted to find your voice and do you feel like you did?

ROM1 : Yeah, absolutely. I mean now the music that I want to make is a bit different than what I’ve made in the sense that I’ve learned so much and I think I would want to do things differently moving forward. But it’s super liberating to me to have finished this project, because I’ve been wanting to make music for myself in this very personal way for as long as I can remember I never really did it. I never had enough faith in myself that I could do that and now that I’ve proven to myself that I could make something of that size, I’m way more confident in my ability to do it again and better and to just keep doing it.

PAN M 360 : Was there anything that surprised you in the process of making an album from start to finish?

ROM1 : Yeah, well the sharing process has not been what I expected. I mean I’m just thinking about that now because that’s what I’ve been doing recently, like the record came out a month ago. While I was making the album I was also really looking forward to sharing it and promoting it and it turns out I really don’t like that part. I think it was probably the most difficult part for me. I thought that the most difficult part was going to be the isolation and being really strict, having really strict discipline to get that record done especially when you’re an independent music maker but it turned out the promotion and putting my face out there and really like showing myself in this really vulnerable way. It was important for me to show myself authentically and to be very vocal about what this record represented to me and that was extremely difficult.

PAN M 360 : Well I think it was worth it! So what’s next for ROM1?

ROM1 : Some… maybe a little bit of disappearing at first. I’m really excited to open a new chapter of my life, I just moved to a new apartment. I was telling my friend last night at dinner, for three years it felt like I had two jobs, my regular job and my music job that didn’t pay and that I had to finance my second job with my first job. And now I’m happy to only have one job and there’s already new music that I’m excited to work on but I think I’m going to do it differently and hopefully I get another record out there in a few years and hopefully some songs before then.

PAN M 360 : And maybe just to end on, could you tell us what your favourite song is on the album? Or the tune that means the most to you?

ROM1 : I think the song that I’m the most proud of is J’ai rien d’autre à vivre, which is the last song of the record. It’s the song that I had the most significant moment with. It’s the most songlike song on the record and it’s perhaps the only song that was really written as a song, like I had the whole parts before I produced it. I’m really attached to the lyrics because that’s something that I was feeling very strongly when I was working on the album. I think that’s probably the most meaningful one to me.

PAN M 360 : For me too. Thanks again ROM1.

As the energy of the M for Montréal festival reaches its crescendo on closing night, we had the privilege of sitting down with the psych-rock outfit Hippie Hourrah! Comprising of Cédric Marinelli on voice, Gabriel Lambert on guitar, and Miles Dupire-Gagnon on drums, the band shares insights into their sonic journey just before hitting the stage for a night of transcendental musical exploration.

PAN M 360 : Hello Hippie Hourrah! Thanks for making the time before your show. You’ll be on stage in a few hours, does the band do anything in particular before a gig. Any kind of pre-show ritual or something?

Gabriel : Well I don’t know. We just goof around.

Miles : Yeah, but then again a ritual means it happens everytime, and sometimes we don’t.

PAN M 360 : You don’t get particularly nervous or anything?

Cedric: We’re getting too old for that. We know what we’re in for, we get disappointed if it’s shit but we just try and have fun out there.

PAN M 360 : As a “psychedelic” rock band, do you make room for a lot of spontaneity in the live set?

Gabriel : For sure, there’s quite a bit of that. We kind of have some organised jams, and sometimes we surprise ourselves by going other places entirely, just going off script.

PAN M 360 : Has the script been to play mostly off of Exposition Individuelle? Have you been trying out some newer material perhaps?

Miles : Did you see our set earlier? We play most songs from our latest record and then some from the previous record.

Gabriel : I mean the album came out in April so not too much newer stuff yet.

PAN M 360 : How did your earlier set go?

Miles : Well we played just a 30 minute set.

Cedric : Yeah for the music business. You know music business people.

Gabriel : Yeah it was an industry show but I would rather play an industrial show

PAN M 360 : And what exactly is the industry these days? Do you find that it’s still relevant or it’s becoming more and more irrelevant?

Cedric : That’s the big question

Gabriel : Yeah big question. I was just talking about it with some people last week. It’s like there’s kind of a two-speed industry right now. The old industry that’s still going and that’s trying to keep the fire alive, and then there’s everything else and so it doesn’t feel so coherent anymore.

MIles : I would say that everybody has good intentions but I don’t find that the priorities are to get the money to the right people. I mean musicians are always the last ones to get something, which makes sense in a bureaucratic way, but musicians are the ones who need the money.

Cedric : At the same time, when we started, there was nothing for us to start from. We started during the pandemic. Miles had broken his arm. He told me I have some time, and together we started trying out some stuff and now we’re a band. It’s cool, in the sense that we have a good team with us, we work really hard, we do a lot of touring. Sure we’re new, and so nobody knows us, but we’re going to keep making music and when it works, it works, and when it doesn’t work, well, we drink.

PAN M 360 : I’d love to know the story behind the band name. Was it easy? Because usually that’s the hardest part.

Cedric : Well we were still not a serious band yet and I just said it and we thought it was kind of stupid, but still it just took on.

Miles : I’ve met a lot of people that don’t really like the name actually.

Cedric : But what’s funny is that on Instagram, there’s like a bunch of hippies that follow us because of our name. That’s so funny.

PAN M 360 : Speaking about Instagram, do you find that it’s a necessary tool for the band?
Miles : Well it seems to be the only thing….It used to be like, even just three years ago with Facebook, that you were on tour and there was an event for your show. Okay, there’s 250 people interested. But now there’s just nobody there..

Cedric : I try to do DIY stuff. Like to promote the arty side of the band. Like the covers, stuff like that, all the visuals, that’s what I do. To maintain our identity.

PAN M 360 : Your music is most often described as ‘psychedelic rock’, well ‘nonchalant psychedelic rock’ for this program, but I mean do you think that’s a descriptor or do you resent it a bit?

Miles : I don’t think so. It’s just rock.

Gabriel : The danger is that if you call it psychedelic rock, then people have a really kind of clear picture in their minds of what to expect. And while we touch on those influences we’re not exactly Paisley rockers from the 60’s.

PAN M 360 : Well anyone just needs to listen to “Pur sang rouge”. Awesome song.

Cedric : Thanks. I personally don’t want to do just one thing. When I started doing the demo for that with Gab, he gave me a little keyboard and I wanted to do a kind of rap tune, and the guys laughed at me, you know, whatever. In the end even if it’s not rap, we compromise, and we find something that sounds cool.

PAN M 360 : And is that how the songs come about, kind of with a jam or something?

Miles : No, not really. It should though, haha.

Gabriel : Yeah, it should, but it doesn’t.

Cedric : I think every song has its own story behind it.

Gabriel : I think that if we were jamming to play songs, we would just record hours and hours of just improvised music. I would have a hard time limiting it to just five minutes you know.

PAN M 360 : I know the visual element is really a big part of the band, do you make an effort to bring that to the live shows?

Gabriel : Well, tonight we are going to have some projections actually, which is pretty cool. And I don’t know if you’ve seen Cedric, but there’s something going on there. We’re doing some stuff with our costumes, and that’s something we can do on tour too, because bringing lights is costly.

PAN M 360 : All your albums have been really well produced with a tight kind of pop-production. You’ve got a bunch of overdubs and stuff. Do you feel the need to compensate in the live show with more energy, more jams, or something.

Miles : Well It can be different, too. Personally, I see the live set as a different album, a different creative aspect. I mean, a live show that sounds exactly like the album, personally, would get bored of it.

Cedric : Yeah, I mean we already tracked it. We want to do something different now.

PAN M 360 : So does a song like “Pur sang rouge” open up more in the live show?

Miles : Ha, that’s the only one we play kind of as it is.

Cedric : I think it’s great that we have one song that finishes. Because we just tend to do the opposite and just have perpetual jams going on.

PAN M 360 : Fair enough. So what’s next for the band?

Gabriel : We’re hoping for Mexico. It’s not sure but we all just did like five interviews with the press in Mexico. So it seems there’s some interest. We’ll see!

Vancouver-born indie darlings Winona Forever released their third album, Acrobat just earlier this year, but they haven’t shown any signs of slowing down. Coming off the back of an extensive US and Canada tour, plus their first foray into Europe supporting Ginger Root, the four-piece is headed to Quebec to play the M for Montreal festival. PAN M 360 caught up with Ben Robertson (guitar, keys, vocals), Rowan Webster-Shaw (guitar, vocals), and Alex Bingham (drums) prior to the show to learn more about their unannounced new album, their process, and the journey from a DIY Vancouver group to an international tour-worthy band.

PAN M 360: You’ve just wrapped up your first European tour and a big American tour, right? What was that experience like?

Rowan Webster-Shaw: It was really fun.

Ben Robertson: Yeah, Europe was really fun. Ginger Root had a really good crowd. A lot of people spoke English, which I guess I could have been assuming, but it was pretty okay to navigate. We were driving on the other side of the road for a bit there. And like, the wheel’s on the other side, but it was really cool.

PAN M 360: How did it feel to be touring alongside Ginger Root after semi-knowing each other virtually for so long?

BR: Yeah, we were supposed to play together before COVID, as with many things that we were supposed to do before COVID. I’ve been a really big fan of them for a while, and I was kind of waiting for their moment to really pop off which happened with “Loretta” (2021). And thankfully, we’re on the same label. They’re cool people. And it came about that we were kind of hoping to get to Europe, and they were able to get some dates locked in. So it feels really lucky.

PAN M 360: Were there any dates in Europe that felt especially memorable?

Alex Bingham: In particular, the first place we played was Utrecht which was outside Amsterdam, and it was a pretty cool place.

RWS: I think we’re all in agreement that the Netherlands was our favourite place.

BR: Yeah, we like the Dutch sensibility, you know? About their dam approach, that’s pretty cool. Their biking, all their canals.

AB: I bike a lot, so I appreciated the crazy amount of biking.

RWS: They have like one and a half bikes per person.

PAN M 360: Have you mostly been playing songs off of Acrobat and Feelgood, or are you working on any songs we haven’t heard yet?

AB: Yeah, we’ve been playing a few new songs that we recorded this past year. And then some older stuff.

BR: It’s almost like a couple of songs per record. Like we still play stuff from our first record. Only a couple, but it helps to keep some of that energy. Which is interesting, because it’s like old vibes. But also, for people who haven’t seen us before, they get to see a bunch of stuff we’ve done. Right? The eras.

PAN M 360: You guys obviously started out in the Vancouver scene, then had a stint in Montreal—what do you find are the biggest differences between being a band in each city?

RWS: I mean, I feel Vancouver is just smaller. With us being from here, like, we have a little bit more of a community around playing music here. And a lot of our friends who play in bands and stuff are still here. So that was definitely part of why I wanted to come back to Vancouver. And also just kind of being ready for a change again, because we’d been in Montreal for a few years, which was the reason we basically went there in the first place.

BR: Yeah, we were ready for a change having played the same places a lot here in Vancouver.

AB: And then all those places are closed now.

BR: Yeah, little did we know that would be a long break. But I think in Montreal, we were starting to get our footing, and then COVID hit, so then we made a record instead. And then one thing I’d say is that we’ve been lucky with some of the grants in BC. I think in in Quebec, they’re obviously a little more geared towards Francophone artists, which makes sense. But we weren’t really taking advantage of that. We’ve kind of been able to be an export artist from BC, like through Music BC and Creative BC to get some funding. And that’s been really helpful, because there are certain things we didn’t really think we could do, and then there’s actually money for it. And so that’s kind of cool. I think it was healthy for us to try something else. And we did our first US tour from Montreal. We were trying to push ourselves in a few ways. And then now we tour the US from here, but I never would have thought we could. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a mentality thing to keep changing it up.

RWS: I feel like we’ve got to do a bunch of things that I definitely wanted to, but kind of never thought that we would be able to do. Like going to Europe, doing a month and a bit in the US. It’s been pretty crazy.

PAN M 360: Vancouver is known for its DIY scene when it comes to shows—janky house shows, illegal venues, and community-run spaces—do you have a favourite memory of a show in the early days of the band?

RWS: I remember them being really fun. Definitely a lot sloppier. (The three of them crack up.)

BR: I remember one time, we were gonna play a new song Rowan had written—it was “Shrek-Chic.” And I think the man drank about a whole bottle of wine. Our friend had recorded the show, and it was just unusable. But in the best way unusable. I think that it’s something we keep in mind. The energy from those shows was really fun. There’s a place called The Matador that was like a literal basement of a house. And the 60 people that could fit in there felt like a huge amount of energy. So I think that’s where we started. And we couldn’t really just keep doing that forever. But it’s also still, like, the kind of thing that we find fun. Our last show before the pandemic was a house show. It was really fun. I remember climbing all over Alex’s drum kit and just like, electrocuting myself on the mic.

AB: Yeah, getting to play shows like that is some of the most fun.

RWS: They’re both cool. I think it’s definitely something we try and translate when we play larger spaces and more legitimate things.

AB: It is hard, though. When the crowd isn’t like, falling over themselves at the show.

BR: It’s a little bit more of a mentality than a reality. Maybe you bring a certain energy on stage, even though the crowd isn’t so directly responding right in your face. But we played a couple of shows on this Europe run where the crowd was kind of right there, especially in Copenhagen, where we were in this little fishbowl of people. And if I said something on the mic, they could respond and it was pretty intimate in that way. So I don’t know—if someone is to like, jump in the crowd or be kind of weird, some people would really like that. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen a band do that.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, man. That’s all we do.’

PAN M 360: Talking now about Acrobat as a whole, was there anything about making that record that really surprised you? Any challenges that were new to you?

AB: Uh… Yes. (They all laugh.)

BR: Dude, it was so easy. (Laughs)

AB: For me, at least, it’s a lot easier to know what a song is supposed to sound like if we’ve played it live before. I personally get a sense of what the song is at that point. But all of this stuff was kind of just recorded in our basement, and no one had heard it. We had played the stuff together, but it was a lot of re-recording stuff and searching for what this song was. And it took a long time.

BR: Yeah, it probably shouldn’t have taken us that long to make nine songs.

RWS: But we kind of had unlimited time too, and the home studio.

BR: Rowan and I were also learning more about production. And then we had ideas and trying to get piano sounds was new. It was certainly a bit of a head-scratcher to try something new. And to Alex’s point, there isn’t necessarily a goal of like, ‘Oh, man, I gotta do this, and then it’ll translate on stage,’ or whatever. It was kind of just in the bubble of recording. So I think I think we didn’t make it that easy on ourselves. But we did persevere to get some tracks that I still think were a good use of time. And we play the ones that feel good to play live. And some of them, we haven’t really played live, but people like them online or what have you, and that’s cool too.

To contrast it, I don’t know if we’ve announced this, but we have another album. We’ve done like 17 songs since then that we all just cut live, just to really feel differently about that. And the results are really different. Kind of. I mean, not that different but it feels much more like we edited by playing together versus editing by being producer people. So yeah, I think I think it would have been pretty different. But yeah, I don’t know. We had a Rhodes and a Wurlitzer and a piano and different rented stuff on Acrobat and experimented, and I think we tried to keep it interesting.

PAN M 360: Listening through the album, you can tell a lot of editing and refining went into the process. Was there a lot of music that didn’t make the cut for it or ended up being better for your solo project?

AB: Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that didn’t… That we didn’t finish.

BR: Yeah, there’s stuff we didn’t finish. There are a couple of things we were doing live that we dropped. I also had some extra songs that I just made into my own EP. The ones that kind of stuck through were, I think, kind of the best ones. But some of them were just getting tricky, so we stopped working on them. I think that was probably a product of the mentality. I know people who didn’t have much creativity at all during the pandemic, like, it’s not really a super inspiring time. Especially in Montreal, where it was kind of locked down around 7 or 8 PM. Not a super normal time.

PAN M 360: Speaking of that next thing, how far along in the process are you for the new album?

BR: It’s into mastering! We tried to just do it a lot quicker, tried to make more, and get more past the finish line. And that’s felt a little bit more like how we used to make records. We did our first album mostly live, and so there’s something intuitive there. I mean, we’re a band that has live chemistry, and we can record live. Although the first couple of tracks we did for that one, I was wondering, like, ‘Can we do this?’ We’d just been in editing mode for a little bit, which is cool. I like music that sounds like that. But I also like music that sounds really raw. So we got those first couple days of tracking done, and I thought it sounded great. So that felt really cool to know that we could do either.

AB: We’ve sort of always wanted to do something new every time we go to make whatever the project is at the time. So I think any approach is valid, and we’ll see.

RWS: A live thing is pretty nice because it’s just so fast.

BR: We’ve had a few different workflows, and they’ve needed to change over time. It used to be that Alex would handle all the recording and mixing because he went to audio school. And Rowan and I would be like, what, mic is that? Why are you doing that? And slowly, we kind of learned our own takes on things, and now the process is a little bit more democratic. But also going to a studio is nice—someone else does that stuff and you get to just be like, ‘Alright, are we locked in together? Are we playing the way we want to?’

We recorded in New Westminster at a place called Little Red Sounds on Gabriola Island at Noise Floor. And both had good engineers and producers that worked there, so we got to just kind of go and be the band.

RWS: And that was something we hadn’t done before.

AB: We did a decent amount of pre-production on some of it. And then other stuff was more in the studio. And that was kind of fun to just be able to focus on like, what you’re playing and what sound you’re putting into it instead of, having to think about like, ‘Oh, how am I going to mic this drum?’

PAN M 360: Did you find that any of the music shifted as you went through that process, or did it feel pretty locked in?

RWS: Some of it was fairly locked in. But some of it, especially towards the end of the process, was more like, we had ideas but they only really came together as we played.

BR: What I noticed was like, let’s say you’re overdubbing just bass on something or just guitar. You do your three-minute take, and then you hear back one thing. And if you’re tracking the whole band, and you’re all just fine-tuning on the song—like, okay, let’s lean back here, let’s really push this harder—and then you hear the whole song back through the speakers, and you’ve been in control of the whole song. That kind of puts power in the band to be in control of the whole thing, instead of getting into a loop of changing parts or overdubbing something, and just doing things one at a time. It’s just a little bit different.

RWS: Definitely. Being able to listen to everything and not just focus on if what you played is perfect. Focusing on whether everything feels good together and being okay with letting some things go if it’s the right call.

BR: You bring the control into the room when you’re just like, ‘Alright, let’s all play.’

RWS: You know if everything is working, or if it’s not.

PAN M 360: What else can we expect from the new album?

BR: Well, there’s no piano. Well, it isn’t noticeable. It’s a bit of a return to some more guitar vibes and some higher-energy stuff. I think the feeling that it has cohesively is sort of live-off-the-floor. It’s a range of songs—including some songs that Rowan and Ruby (the bass player), and I wrote lyrically together. We would sit here with acoustic guitars and write together, and that’s something we haven’t done for a while. Or ever. Usually, maybe one of us would bring a song and then we collaborate with the rhythm and kind of go from there. But yeah, some group vocals, stuff like that. I think there’s new territory on it for us.

PAN M 360: When you’re working on something new, do you ever struggle with making it fit a certain ‘Winona Forever’ sound? Or do you feel pretty comfortable letting the band’s sound evolve as you do?

RWS: I think we generally just want to keep moving forward. So I don’t really feel any kind of drawbacks about bringing an idea to this group, and it can be different.

BR: I think it’s kind of a mentality. I find it tricky sometimes. But if you’re an artist, you might be like ‘Oh, here’s my next idea. And it’s really different.’ And then their best friends are like, ‘Alright, it still sounds like you.’ But you can’t see that. You’re doing the same kind of melodies and chords, and it’s got a different energy, but I’m still seeing the throughline. Playing the Acrobat stuff live, I think I had the kind of moment when I was playing the Wurlitzer live. And we now have a moment in the set where we’re kind of rocking out a bit, then do the Wurlitzer stuff, then a pretty slow song, then rock out a bit more. And that’s been fun. And I think it’s kind of funny to still play some of the stuff that we’ve played for years and years. But then once you’re playing it, it kind of brings that same feeling that the band’s had for quite a while now. And I think it’s pretty cool that we still have that.

WINONA FOREVER PLAYS L’ESCOGRIFFE, NOV. 17 10 PM W/ ALEX NICOL, & SORRY GIRLS

Photos by Raunie Mae Baker

When continents collide, they make a thunderous sound. Al-Qasar create the soundtrack to that fission. Arabian fuzz, they term it, a vision that’s brazenly electric and deeply connected to its roots. The band was started in the Barbès neighborhood of Paris by producer Thomas Attar Bellier, who brought together musicians from France, Lebanon, the USA, Morocco, Algeria, Armenia and Egypt.

Al-Qasar play November 15th at Café Campus at 10:55pm.

PAN M 360 : Hey Thomas, thanks for taking the time. Are you tuning in from Montreal then?

Thomas Attar Bellier : Yeah, we just arrived a couple hours ago. I don’t know if you know it but I’m at Biftek Bar.

PAN M 360 : Of course. Is it the band’s first time performing in Quebec?

Thomas : It is yeah, and even for me it’s my first time performing in Canada actually. Even though I lived in the US for so long, we’re very excited.

PAN M 360 : And so are we. Al-Qasar is a really interesting project that you have. Did you always have this vision of making Arabian desert rock?

Thomas : Well personally I come from the psychedelic scene. This is the scene I grew up in, this is the scene I started touring in when I was a kid. I grew up in France, moved to California at a pretty young age, and then I was immediately exposed to the whole stoner, psychedelic stuff. But at the same time, I did always have an interest in North African music. Growing up in Paris, I was exposed to a lot of, you know, really cool oud players, percussionists, singers, and so on. So that was, you know, that was a bit of my bipolar musical upbringing.

And there came a time where I was in LA, collaborating with a Jordanian poet. His name is Farid Al Madain and he came up with the idea, he said, man, why don’t I write some radical poetry in the style of Ahmed Fuadnag – the revolutionary Egyptian poet – and you can compose some really cool psychedelic tracks to go with it. We can do something completely new where we can have this psychedelic rock project with influences from North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, with radical lyrics where we use classical Arabic in a way that it’s rarely been used before.

That was the first version of the idea and then the idea grew to include even more influences because I was really into the Turkish psychedelic scene at the time, which is a scene which was already kind of accomplishing that fusion of old Turkish poetry and old Persian poetry, and mixing it with more like Western psych rock influences, you know?

So those were the early beginnings of the band and that was five years ago now, since then the project evolved a lot. But yeah, the first sessions were very, it was just organic. It was like Farid was just writing poetry and he would just translate it for me and it would just inspire the musical aspects and we would just go back and forth a bunch. But the thing is, Farid’s only a poet, he’s not really a singer. So I had to be really, you know, on top of the musical and melodic aspects.

PAN M 360 : Well your album really shines in those respects. Hobek Thawrat and Sham System especially are some bangers.

Thomas : Thanks, that’s really cool because actually on “Hobek Thawrat” the singer is Alsarah. And we’re actually performing with her here in Montreal. Because you know, at core this band is a collective and the idea is to always collaborate with different artists as much as possible, try to rotate the lineup, perhaps some guests and so on. And Alsarah is someone we’ve been working with a lot lately. We did six festivals with her last summer in Europe and Africa. And she’s back with us in Montreal for two gigs. So that’s really exciting. Because she’s Sudanese, but she lives in New York. So it made sense to invite her for these gigs.

PAN M 360 : I saw that Lee Ranaldo played on Who are We?, that must have been really cool. How did that happen?

Thomas : Yeah, the connection with Lee happened through a mutual friend of ours, the gonzo poet Ron Whitehead from Louisville, Kentucky. He’s a guy I have collaborated with over the years. He’s like the last of the beat poets, you know, he’s like this old school guy who’s like carrying the flame of Ginsburg and Kerouac. He used to hang with all those guys and so on. And when I sent him the demos for this new album we’re doing with Al-Qasar, he was like, man, you’ve got to get Thurston or Lee on this record. And I was like, man, I’m into that.

So he made the connection and Lee immediately said, yeah, I’m really digging this sound,

I’m in. That was really cool and he must have sent me like more than 20 guitar tracks. He recorded so much material for the track and it took me I think three days to sort through it and you know just like produce it. At the same time it was breaking my heart because I had to cut a lot of stuff so you know I got all these secret Lee Ranaldo tracks sitting in my hard drive.

PAN M 360 : Amazing. And It’s amazing too just how many moving parts there are in this project. It must be a logistical nightmare.

Thomas : Of course that’s what a lot of people say and I totally agree. But at the end of the day it’s so worth it. You know this project is so fulfilling, in terms of the musicianship we get ot exchange but also culturally, like I feel it was really important for me to do something that was a bit more representative of who we are today as a society you know, like how multicultural we all are. I’m not even talking philosophically, I’m talking like in our daily lives, you live in a big city today, you’re going to interact with people from all over the world. And their culture will permeate in the vibe of your neighbourhood, your city, and so on. And eventually, it’s gonna be part of your life too.

I think that Paris is a really good example for this. Paris has been a very Arab city for about a 100 years, you know, and it’s really a place where in every field, you know, from arts to food, to language, where Arab culture is really present, and I feel like the mainstream is trying to repress it. But at the same time in their daily lives, they totally still eat couscous.

PAN M 360 : Well in Montreal we just had the Festival du Monde Arabe and it was nice to see a lot of people there. And after hearing a lot of traditional Arab styles it’s very cool to hear it in this rock context. It pushes things forward you know. I imagine people must really dig what you do on stage. What are the logistics of getting this band playing live?

Yeah so the band’s been touring a lot more this year, worldwide, so we’ve decided to simplify a bit the lineup with Sacha Vikan who’s a French Armenian drummer, Guillaume Théodin who’s a French bass player, and Sibel Durgut, who’s a Turkish singer, and she also plays percussion and kawala, traditional flute, and lead vocals, and myself on saz and guitar. The band started with more musicians on stage, but it was really hard to make it happen and it wasn’t that viable financially. So we just had to simplify, but now it’s like the simplification doesn’t feel like we’re losing some quality or whatever. It’s actually the opposite because now it’s really solidified into a core lineup of people on stage.

PAN M 360 : And in your live performance, do things kind of naturally get more kind of jammy and loose compared to the record, which is kind of relatively tight you know.

Thomas : Yeah man you’re absolutely right. That’s a bit my style of production in the studio. I like things to be super tight. You know every transition to be a slap in the face. But yeah you’re right in the sense that having this core lineup and having played with them a lot lately has made it a bit more like second nature to easier to introduce jams in the show.

PAN M 360 : And so what can we expect at the Montreal performance then?

Thomas : So it’s going to be Alsarah on vocals, as I mentioned earlier, so we’re definitely going to do this “Hobek Thawrat” track from the last record for which she wrote the lyrics. And yeah, we’re going to do a set with her that we’ve been working on all summer. It’s going to be really good, it’s actually going to be all Al-Qasar songs except one, which will be one of her tunes. We love playing with her. Last time we played with her was in September, we played in Tunis, a really cool festival in the old Medina. And then before that we were on a European tour together and it’s, you know, like getting back on stage with her is just like, you know, the vibe is at 110%.

PAN M 360 : Do you notice a difference in the reaction from the crowds in North Africa versus Europe or the States?

Thomas : Oh, for sure. It’s really interesting because it’s pretty subtle sometimes. Some interesting shows we played were like Egypt and Tunisia, where obviously Secret Service was present in the audience. And it’s like, you know, you’re being watched, but also like audience members know they’re being watched, too. So you feel like people are trying to stay pretty composed and measured, but others just don’t care. And they just want to enjoy and have fun, you know.

But even, you know, through Europe, we so many different behaviours, depending on the country. What’s cool with the band is that we’ve been invited to seated jazz festivals, but we’ve also been invited to like electronic music festivals where we play at 3am. And I love that, you know, it keeps you on your toes.

PAN M 360 : I mean, if you’ve never played Montreal before you’re going to love it, because we love our music here. And you’ve got two live shows in fact. You must be tired!

Thomas : I mean touring is really hard and you get really tired. But the cool thing with this project is that we’re really just like a group of close friends. So the vibe is always super positive, you know. And it’s a privilege, actually, to be a touring artist. Whenever I want to complain, I just need to remind myself like, dude, look at the life you’re living. This is a privileged life guy, like, enjoy it to the max, enjoy it to the fullest.

PAN M 360 : Thanks Thomas, we know it’s going to be a really great show already.

‘Selfhood’ is the debut EP from Montreal DIY artist Everly Lux. Recorded and produced with a women/non-binary-only team, this 7-song journey is an ode to becoming and belonging to yourself. Using poetic lyrics, each song is a story that aims to dig deep into the dichotomies of love, grief, violence and reality.

PAN M 360 : Hey Everly, thanks for being here. Congratulations on the release of Selfhood. For your first release you already have such a strong artistic persona. Maybe you could tell us how it all came to be.

Everly Lux: Well this has all been really interesting to me because I wasn’t necessarily planning on releasing acoustic folk music. I wasn’t even listening to that much folk. I have always been a part of a lot of other projects, more pop sort of stuff. I played in an indie-rock band for a while but none of none of these projects really worked out, and then while I was studying music for about six years, I was kind of too busy to really think about an artistic identity and all that. Finally I hit some sort of crossroads and I said, okay, I’m going to try and get myself some grants and focus on my music for a year and in that time Everly Lux was created.

PAN M 360 : So was this folk style a new direction or something you’ve explored for a while by yourself?

Everly Lux: It’s sort of a recent thing. I think it was like in early 2021 that I wrote “Is it True” which is the one song that I’ve written that was different from anything else I had done. It felt like a new project, a new sound, a new identity. Soon after I went on a huge road trip. I drove to LA for three months and it was during this time that selfhood kind of began to take shape. This word just stuck to me, and then when I came back with all of this baggage I wrote all the other songs.

PAN M 360 : It’s interesting you call your album Selfhood when you took on a whole new persona of Everly Lux. How do you reconcile these two identities? Do you see Everly as your alter-ego or more your true self?

Everly Lux: Yeah, well, good question. I mean one of the themes of this album is truth, like there’s a lot of mentions of that and I think my take is that there are many truths and I feel Everly is just one of my true selves. Selfhood is not only about being your static self but it’s a behaviour, it’s an action, it’s an act of becoming yourself. So it implies change, it implies that it’s a process and something that will always need to be done.

PAN M 360 : Of course a big part of the Everly identity seems to be this weird and wonderful sort of aesthetic. So where does your draw to the surreal come from?

Everly Lux : I think I have always felt like an alien and I think that comes across musically too. I wanted to make something different and more experimental than most of the pop music I was hearing. I have a bachelor’s in contemporary music composition too, so I was exposed to super dissonant super weird stuff, but then that stuff was not very accessible because people don’t relate to it. So I wanted to like take that kind of dissonance and edge and put it into something more digestible and also beautiful. One of the most important things for me is originality, so I care a lot about doing something different.

PAN M 360 : How do you go about writing your songs? Do you have a process or not really?

Everly Lux : Yeah, I have many, like, different approaches, but I work a lot with titles. I will brainstorm until I arrive at some sort of word or concept. And then musically there’s always things I want to explore like oh I want to explore this key or this style. Sometimes I’ll get obsessed with one track from another artist and be like I want to do something like that. I feel melodies come naturally to me and chords is like the easy part, so I spend a lot of time on the lyrics and the poetry. It’s very important to me, I hope people read them. That’s why I make these booklets.

PAN M 360 : Did you have any qualms about writing in English versus French or anything like that?

Everly Lux : My first solo project was more bilingual for sure. I’ve always been into languages. I lived in Germany and I speak German and have even made some German music too. I think when I created Everly Lux there was some notion of like trying to make it financially sustainable and you know how the market is. But also just thinking about the artists I listen to and what languages they sing in, not too many of them are singing in French. The industry in Quebec too is just all the same dudes plugged into like three labels. I wanted to get away from that and so a big part of my vision is to work with female and non-binary artists.

PAN M 360 : We all know how dire the industry is these days. As a newly independent artist who do you see as an exemplar of what the independent musician can do in 2023?

Everly Lux : I think every artist has their preferences. Some artists really love studio recording and working on albums and others prefer to play live as much as possible. One artist I really like is Aldous Harding and she plays so much, I mean she tours like insane. And that’s kind of what I’d like to do, play shows like all the fucking time. A lot of artists I like are based in the UK, like Anna B Savage. She just released an album and it’s really amazing. Lisa O’Neil too, she’s in Ireland. And here, of course there’s Helena Deland. I admire what she’s achieved and she also tours a lot, she’s going on tour right now.

PAN M 360 : How did you feel about distributing your music? Did you have your reservations about putting it on streaming services?

Everly Lux : I don’t support Spotify, but everyone else uses that, so I put my music on there.

I think at this point I need to be visible, so the exposure is worth more than anything. It’s kind of like how it goes. You have to play shows.

PAN M 360 : And you have a show coming up soon?

Everly Lux : Yes, I have a show on Monday at Ursa with William Duval. His music is very touching and heartbreaking. And Holly McLachlan. It’s going be really lovely, we named the show ‘Folk-Arc in Three Acts’.

PAN M 360 : Will you be playing songs mostly off of Selfhood then?

Everly Lux : Yeah, but actually I’m going to play a new song that I just wrote this week. It’s really exciting for me right now because I’m going back into the creation phase of writing more music and I’m grateful that I’m not despising music after releasing my album. I’m just excited and enthusiastic in spite of everything, in spite of the industry, I’m glad.

PAN M 360 : We’re glad too. Thanks, Everly.

Mamadou Koïta is a singer-songwriter, virtuoso percussionist and heir to a musical tradition handed down from generation to generation. A very active musician, he has already performed numerous times across the country and elsewhere, and over the years has joined forces with several musicians who are also well known on the Montreal and Quebec music scene.

Tomorrow, Mamadou Koïta will be launching his first career album, in what promises to be one of the most exhilarating concerts of his career! This first opus, entitled Terry, brings together songs that continue the storytelling lineage from which he comes from while tackling subjects that are close to his heart and that touch him more personally.

On the eve of this concert launch, PAN M 360 spoke with Mamadou Koïta about his album, his inspirations, and the people who have accompanied him since the start of his musical career in Quebec.

PAN M 360: Hello! You come from a musical family, correct?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: Yes, I come from a family of griots. When we say griots, we mean people who give out messages. It was the griots who played for the village chiefs. In my family, my grandfather did it, then my father, then me. And it was these people who gave messages on behalf of the village chief: if things were going well, if things were going badly, if a child was lost…

PAN M 360: What led you to create this project, Terry? What is the origin of this project?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: It’s a bit of a family story that led me to this project. Today, I’m a father and a son. In my family, everyone is a musician, my brothers, my sisters… Everyone sings, everyone dances. Making music wasn’t a question, but a project like this, I wasn’t expecting it at all!

PAN M 360: So Terry is your first album?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: Yes, it’s the first time I’ve been able to work in this way in Quebec, the first time I’ve been able to do an album launch. I’m so happy! I don’t know how to describe it. And I have to thank everyone who helped me make this project possible.

PAN M 360: How did you meet the people you collaborate with, and how did you come to work with them?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: I arrived in Quebec, Canada, in 2011. A lot of people helped me get here. I was invited on tours, and when I came here I really liked it. And then there was Nuits d’Afrique, which gave me a lot of support. Since my arrival, not a year has gone by without me doing a concert with them. For me, it’s a real opportunity. And then there are all my musician friends I’ve met who have also worked very hard and helped me with my album.

PAN M 360: So the title of your album, Terry, is a reference to all these people…

MAMADOU KOÏTA: In our language, in Bambara, Terry means friendship. Without friendship, nothing works. That’s why I named the album Terry.

PAN M 360: When we listen to your album, we can hear that tradition you were talking about, but there are also instruments that sound very modern. There are electric guitars, synthesizers… Why did you want to mix these two elements?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: My father was a traditional musician, so I learned from him. When I travelled and heard music from the West, I also wanted to mix things up. Instruments and languages. I wanted to give my music a different colour.

For me, music knows no boundaries. So guitar, balafon, kora, goni or djembe, for me, all go together. Because everyone loves the vibrations they give off. So I tried to do something different from my father. My father never did that, so I tried.

PAN M 360: Would you say that’s what characterizes your music?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: Yes, because a lot of people can relate to my music. Because, in theory, that’s what friendship is all about. Without friendship, there’s no love. And without friendship, we could never work together. You have to be able to get along to work together. So the album, with all these different sounds mixed together, represents something very important for me in my life, and I hope it will be just as important for the people who hear the album.

PAN M 360: What other themes inspired you to compose your album?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: I often talk about adventure in my compositions. Adventure, because I left my country and came to Quebec. And I’ve met a lot of good people here, and I’ve learned a lot too. My song “Wawana” is about that. I say, “Mom, I know it’s very hard to be away, don’t cry, I’ll go back, so say a good prayer for me in your heart.”

Often I find myself thinking about things I don’t like to see, for example, the war at the moment, which is everywhere, everywhere. Everyone’s protecting themselves and doing everything they can to avoid finding themselves at war too. Some of my songs also come from these thoughts.

PAN M 360: Basically, this is a very personal album. You tell us about your life, your journey, your thoughts…

MAMADOU KOÏTA: Yes, and also about the things I’ve seen and experienced here that weren’t there in my country. You have to learn to be patient in life. You can’t close in on yourself. You have to be open to others. For example, when I arrived here, I didn’t understand the Quebec language very well. I think it’s really incredible to have managed to get through that and to be able to teach people things here.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the launch concert tomorrow. How did you imagine it?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: I can’t wait! The way I see it, it’s a big open door for me and for the musicians who helped me. I can’t just talk about myself, I have to talk about the musicians with me too. This is the first time in my life that I’ve done this. And I hope it goes well and that people enjoy the day as much as I do because I’m happy here.

PAN M 360: Can you tell us a bit more about tomorrow’s concert?

MAMADOU KOÏTA: I’d like to keep it a surprise, but I can say a bit about it! There will be surprises that people don’t expect. I hope that everyone can come out, Quebecers, Canadians, whatever, and support me and all the musicians. And really, this is the first time in my life that’s happened. And one thing’s for sure: there’s going to be dancing! We’ll have to fasten our seatbelts!

PAN M 360: Thank you very much for your time, and I wish you an excellent concert and a great launch!

MAMADOU KOÏTA: Thank you! I’d like to thank everyone who helped me make this record, and I invite everyone to come and dance and enjoy these first days of the album launch.

Read here Frédéric Cardin’s review of Terry on PAN M 360

Mamadou Koïta will launch his album Terry on Friday, November 10 at 9 pm in concert at Club Balattou. Information and tickets HERE!

The second chapter of his inspiring path, Motewolonuwok, was first inspired by a poem by Cherokee writer Qwo-li Driskill. “From the heavy wreckage of loss, we emerge together”. Jeremy Dutcher sings in Wolastoqey, his mother tongue native language, without any backward-looking attitude.

Classically trained as a tenor singer, Dutcher achieved a multi-referential music and songwriting through an exploration of contemporary indigenous identity, more precisely Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk Nation – New Brunswick, Quebec and Maine, along the Wolastoq river – St.John river according to the colonizer official name. His reinvention of his own cultural heritage, mixing it with western classical music, jazz, electronic music or chamber pop, is simply brillant.

Jeremy Dutcher’s 2018 debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, won the Polaris Prize and a JUNO Award. Without a doubt, it’s now a reference album for Canadian contemporary culture. On this new recording, He sings also in English because he sees this bilingual choice it as « a powerful invitation to collective healing and understanding, a direct line of communication to convey his community’s stories of healing, resilience and emergence to all who listen. »

Reached in Paris, where he was touring last October, Jeremy Dutcher granted PAN M 360 a long interview that we put online just before his new concert.

PAN M 360 : How are you doing?

Jeremy Dutcher : I’m doing fine, man. Greetings from Paris. Cool. How are you doing?

PAN M 360 : Very good. About Paris?

Jeremy Dutcher : Oh my God, this is fantastic! I mean, the city is amazing. I just did a radio interview. We’re kind of doing some press for the new album all over here. And I have a show in a very intimate venue, L’Accord parfait, in the 18th arrondissement.

PAN M 360 : You know, my partner and I we did a 3 weeks road trip through your homeland in New Brunswick and also Nova Scotia. And when I was driving and resting in your area, I thought about you and your previous record.

Jeremy Dutcher : Nice! Well, especially from the first album. That music is so connected to where I come from. I’m glad you got to experience the beauty of that area.

PAN M 360 : Further in Nova Scotia, we had a few brief but nourishing conversation with Mi’gmaq people in Cape Breton. Also visiting some museums, we’ve acknowledged some aspects of your heritage and of course the legitimate concerns of First Nations in the Maritimes.

Jeremy Dutcher : They’re very nice people over there. I’m glad you get to hang out with them.

PAN M 360 : Yeah, we learned things !

Jeremy Dutcher : It’s eye opening. I hope every time that non indigenous people engage with indigenous people they get a new perspective. Look at the place and the space in a different way.

PAN M 360 : Well, probably we are late in this process, but at least some of us changed their mind about our history. Because we, French Québécois, were oppressed by English for a couple of centuries, we tended to forget or ignore that we were at first colonizers when we came to this continent.

Jeremy Dutcher : Well, don’t worry, guys like me are here to remind people it’s okay. It’s like taking the guilt away from that conversation, because we’re all now here on this continent together.

PAN M 360 : Yeah. We have to live together now.

Jeremy Dutcher : That’s it. Nobody’s going back to France or Europe, maybe just to visit, but nobody’s going anywhere. In Canada, we’re here together, and we got to figure out a pathway forward.

PAN M 360 : Exactly. And we’ve got to share the culture of each and mix, we have to embrace your culture and vice versa.

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah but, that’s the thing, too. I think indigenous people have been doing the vice versa for a very long time. On the other side, that wasn’t exactly the case. When Europeans first came to North America, they thought we had nothing to teach them. They thought they had everything to teach us because they were Christians.

PAN M 360 : Yep.They thought Christian religion was the best. And their superiority with the weapons (guns) made them feel they were more civilized than indigenous peoples.

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah, but I think it was more than this, it was also an ideology. For example, take feudalism, kings and queens, uptight hierarchy, frontiers, this is not really something we had. This is kind of a very different ideology than we have in our social structures. But yes, it is for sure the weapons, and it is for sure the Christianity..

PAN M 360 : Of course, First Nations social structures were already a pre democratic concept.

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah! We may have even invented the thing !

PAN M 360 : When I was a teenager in the 70’s, I remember reading « The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State », an essay by Friedrich Engels published in 1884, based on Karl Marx’s notes on Lewis Henry Morgan’s anthropological studies of traditional societies.There was a substantial part about Iroquois society structure and it’s progressive qualities regarding democratic participation and matriarchy.

Jeremy Dutcher : Wait, what? Engels wrote about indigenous society ?

PAN M 360 : Of course, yeah.

Jeremy Dutcher : Oh, my God. You’re blowing my mind right now. Thank you! I’m going to go look this up right now.

PAN M 360 : You’re quite welcome ! Now let’s talk about our main topic : you 2nd album.

Jeremy Dutcher : It actually came from my experience with the first album, the first album all in Wolastokey. I created that first album very much for my people and there were no translations provided. But understanding too that with the notoriety and the attention from the first record, a lot of non indigenous people also were listening too, for me it was about speaking to them in a direct way and telling our stories in a way that is going to make sense to them. And hopefully change their heart and impact their thinking about native people.

PAN M 360 : Yeah, your values have to be understood by anyone, beyond your people.

Jeremy Dutcher : We actually need that. What we’re missing right now is the context in terms of how we got to where we are in our society. In Canada, we always talk about the two solitudes, but this is not true, there’s so much more than that. Because if we understand that the differences within indigenous communities are fundamental based on our ways of thinking and knowing and that healing of our own ways is also hopefully going to invite other people who are non indigenous, into that way.

PAN M 360 : You’re absolutely right. We have now to share values and find a different path together.

Jeremy Dutcher : This is always a hope, our elders say it has always been a welcome song. And by that she means we’ve always been welcoming people. And that has never changed. Maybe sometimes to a fault, maybe too far, but we’ve always been that welcome and we can’t change that now. And really we say that for us, but we say that for everyone, which is to say that we don’t build walls.

And we’ve created this canadian pluralist society, Africans, Europeans, Asian people, indigenous people, the whole world then is gathered in Montreal, in Toronto, in these cities where we can actually get a lot of work done together because we’re there with each other. So I think it’s known that, as much as Canada can frustrate me sometimes, the potential is very high because the ways in which the world is gathered in these places is very unique. It’s not like that wherever you go in the world.

The vision of Canada was always or could have always been this inclusive, pluralist society. And now for the first time, we actually can build. We’re if we’re humble enough to say, oh, I don’t know or yes my ancestors fucked this all up, we can do right.

PAN M 360 : We may be not responsible of our ancestors, but we’re responsible of what we do now.

Jeremy Dutcher : Exactly. Yes. And it’s not about carrying this guilt or this blame forward, but it’s about empowering people. To make better choices.Go in better ways.

PAN M 360 : Obviously, this is the stream of your own path as a singer, songwriter and musician. So what did you do differently this time? I observe more choir music for example. There’s a lot of voices overdubs, I also see different kinds of music, even some jazz chords sometimes.

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah, We’re going in many different directions with this one.

PAN M 360 : Can you describe it briefly?

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah, for sure. With the first record, it was very small. There was just myself and a couple of strings and a couple of singers. It was a very kind of a small chamber ensemble. Now for the second one, I wanted to blow that up and expand it, take it all the way. So that string quartet is going to become a full orchestra and those couple of singers become the choir.

For me, the second record felt like a sonic expansion of the first album, but that’s either way, so it’s getting all the way big, but it’s also going all the way small. And for me, there’s a couple of moments on that record that are playing with the nuance and the small space and the delicateness of our stories, and then there’s other songs that are going way over the top and really being dramatic. So the truth is probably somewhere in the middle there. So I hope people can listen and find themselves in some of that music, if not all of it.

PAN M 360 : Yeah, and if we can be more specific, maybe we can pinpoint a few titles and just see how it was crafted.

Jeremy Dutcher : In the first record all the songs are based on the same source material. So they’re all kind of looking at the Ancestor songs. Now with this one, with the new record, it’s very kind of pulling and weaving together all of these different inspirations and kinds of influences. So it kind of does sound different and it came together in different ways.

So, for example, the first song on the record is called « Skicinuwihkuk » which is actually a phrase that I found when I was doing archival research on the first record. I found this quote, and the quote from the ancestor became the lyric for the song. So in that way, I didn’t do much. I wrote the music, of course, but I didn’t necessarily come with the lyrical content.

PAN M 360 : Can you explain the lyrical content of that song?

Jeremy Dutcher : So this means as long as there’s a child among my people, we will protect the land always and forever. When I introduce myself in my language, I might say I’m an indigenous person. Yeah. Sothis is the place of the native people’s land. For me, it’s like a statement of sovereignty. All those years back, that’s a quote from 1763, and they were still saying that same thing of like, we are here and we are protecting the land.

Throughout history, our people have stood up and said, no, actually, we’re going to protect this place and we’re not going to let you do that. I think about Oka, I think about Wet’suwet’en and all of these different sites where our people have stood up and said no, you’re not going to build a fucking golf course here or you’re not going to cut down all of these old growth trees. There’s something more important than development and consumption.And so I think yeah, we just have to keep reiterating that, because it’s clearly like, I think as a country, we have this way of putting the blinders on or turning away from stuff we know is wrong.

PAN M 360 : So this album is a true invitation to open up our minds.

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah, but like I said, it’s always been a welcome song so it’s not about shaming anyone for not being with us. It’s an invitation to say we’re doing something else over here so you can come and hang with us. And we’ve got stories and we’ve got songs and we’ve got all this beautiful thing that we want to get you to know. So come and hang with us.

Now, if you contrast that to a song on the second half of the record called « The Land That Held Them » , it’s very much my words, talking about the hard reality that is often following us as indigenous people right now, but done and captured in a beautiful way. And so for that track, we have a brass quintet, and it’s all orchestrated by Owen Pallett. He kind of did all of these really lush, sick orchestral arrangements.

And so this is something that I’m a singer and a pianist, but I don’t really work with an orchestra in that way. And so kind of relying on the friends and community people around me to say, hey, what are you really good at ? Maybe you could come over here and do it. So it’s kind of drawing together all of these different influences.

PAN M 360 : And if we go on, let’s take one or two picks about other songs you’ve crafted because it’s very diverse, multi genre. It’s not only one kind of predictable indie pop, it’s very diverse.

Jeremy Dutcher : We musicians can sometimes put ourselves in a box to create something that’s maybe palatable or interesting for everyone. And it’s like, well, you’re never going to do that. So just create what you want to create and hopefully that’s going to connect. For me, it’s like weaving together all of those different musical aesthetics that I’ve been taught. Right. So it’s like the traditional element, the classical element, the choir element, bringing that in. For a song like « Sakom », which starts the second half of the record, it’s all a cappella voices, just singing.

And it’s the power of the voice and the power of collectivity and how that aids in our healing together when we sing together. I think this was kind of a unique one too because I knew I wanted the choir on that record. But are they a background, just a Greek chorus kind of like commenting on the thing? Or are they a real voice in the room on the record? For me, I wanted to give them almost the centerpiece of that record.

Because you know, it’s the least amount of music that’s being played and yet those voices kind of are centered and this choir is so beautiful. This is not an existing choir, these are just real friends of mine. I said, hey, come and sing with me. So there’s twelve people in that choir, coming from all different places, some from church choir, other people from music school, other people from jazz scenes. So it’s kind of a melee of all of these different ways of singing. But then they came together and sounded so beautiful together.

PAN M 360 : How were you involved in the production aspect of this album?

Jeremy Dutcher : It was kind of a coproduction of a me and a couple of people. So Owen Pallett really produced those string sessions and the band sessions, and then we had some post production together. My producer from the first record, actually a Montreal based producer named Buffalo, was involved in the post production as well and bringing it together. I also think about people like Basia Bulat. She’s such a nice person. She helped me write one particular song called « Take My Hand » and this one is really a co write experience between my friend and an elder back home and myself. And we all kind of wrote this together. So there are different collaborators on this record that brought it to fruition.

PAN M 360 : Do you perform a lot in your homeland?

Jeremy Dutcher : I don’t find myself there too much these days just because I’m on the road so much. I don’t have a home there. This is where my parents are and my brothers. Before 2026 comes. I want to have a little home in the woods in New Brunswick. But actually right now I spend my time in Montreal these days.

PAN M 360 : Oh, you live here permanently now.

Jeremy Dutcher : Yeah. I think it’s a good choice. I got to work on my French.

PAN M 360 : It will come naturally if you make the effort to do that. But we, French Québécois and others, should make an effort to learn indigenous languages too.

Jeremy Dutcher : There you go. Right? Because it’s about extending ourselves towards each other. You start to learn one indigenous language and then you understand, oh, this is related to all of the other ones around. It’s cool to see those connections. But now I’ll teach you one word in our language for now, and it’s just our word for merci and it’s wooliwon.

PAN M 360 : Cool! Wooliwon to you too!

JEREMY DUTCHER IS PERFORMING ON THURSDAY NOVEMBER 9 , BEANFIELD THEATER, 8 PM. INFOS & TICKETS HERE

We sat with renowned Oudist Nazih Borish to discuss his upcoming performance at FMA this year. Originally from Syria, Nazih relocated to Canada in 2016 and since then has been a tour de force of Middle-Eastern and contemporary music nationwide.

Nazih Borish plays November 7th at 7PM at Salle Claude-Léveillée, Place Des Arts

PAN M 360: Thanks for being with us Nazih. We’re very excited about your performance at the Festival du monde Arabe this year.

Nazih: Of course.

PAN M 360: Maybe you can tell us a bit more about your performance. I saw in the program it has the tagline “from Damascus to Cordoba”. Will you be playing with your group or unaccompanied?

Nazih: Actually this will be a solo performance. I like to play with a band, but with a band, it’s always a bit more organised, you know, and sometimes I like the freedom that comes from playing alone. I can improvise. So just I close my eyes and whatever my situation I will play and try to have the audience join me, join my ideas, join the music. Not that everything will be improvised. I will be playing some compositions and improvising within them, I would say almost like 50/50.

I will play a piece, it’s called Andalusyria. It’s the title of a new project for us, and like this performance,we start with the story of the oud in Syria, and we tell the tale of the travellers who took the instrument from Damascus all the way to Spain.

PAN M 360: So, what is the story of the Oud for those of us who don’t know? Well the simple story I should say.

Nazih: So yes, it’s exactly as you say. I can only give you a simple version, because there are many many stories about how and where the oud came to be. It has different names in China, the pipa, the biwa in Japan, and the sitar in India, and the oud really is the grandfather of string instruments. My last project, The Roots of Strings, was exactly about that.

PAN M 360: And what is your story with the Oud?

Nazih: Oh, my history with the Oud. Well my father, he was like a pop singer. It’s not the pop that you might be thinking of, he was not like very, very famous, you know. But he was still well known and so he was playing this instrument and singing all the time. My uncle plays the violin as well. So I grew up with the music in the family. At that time, there was no YouTube, no internet in Syria, in my country, no nothing. The only thing was the cassette, do you remember those?

I will tell you something about cassettes, because I respect these things. I still keep a car from 2004 because it has a cassette player. I keep it out of respect, it’s how I learned everything. With my father we listened to Munir Bashir in the car. Do you know Munir Bashir? He was an oud player from Iraq. For me, he’s the philosophy of the oud. Because he was playing without borders, without geography. At the same time I listened to a lot of Ravi Shankar, Paco de Lucia.

That’s why I like to mix all these musical cultures and styles on this instrument, this “traditional instrument”. Some people they say, okay, you cannot play more than traditional music on the oud but I don’t accept that. Since I arrived here in Canada and and now I am proudly Canadian, I have been playing with many bands and many kinds of different music, like baroque music and jazz. That’s what I was dreaming about when I was young!

PAN M 360: That’s amazing. I admire your approach so much. This philosophy of music is music.

Nazih: Yeah, no borders, no genres, this is my message actually as a musician. I want to break the rules of how to use this instrument, because it’s actually a very, very open instrument. Six strings, no frets. You can do a lot. Music is only sound after all. And I find the Canadian audiences to be very interested and interesting to perform for. They know about our culture, and know about many different cultures. They care about the music, and the audience here are very respectable. So you cannot play just anything for them. You have to be careful when you get on stage here.

PAN M 360: Well how are you preparing for your concert tomorrow? What are you thinking about? Are you practicing a lot?

Nazih: Look, the practice I do before a day of the concert is to be calm. It’s not physical practice but physiological, you know. To stay calm, to stay focussed. I do the physical practice maybe 15 minutes before a concert. Just to warm up, it’s very necessary.

But the practicing I’ve been doing is to be ready for the people, because as I said the audience are very, very respectable. I don’t speak too much on stage, some people think I’m shy but I’m trying to give all my energy to the music and that’s it. I prefer to let the audience imagine the stories. Like one of my compositions “Damasrose”, it’s the name of the jasmine flower, typical of the streets of Damascus. That image with the music is all you really need to take the journey with me.

PAN M 360: I’m really looking forward to your show and I’m wishing you all the best.

Nazih : Thank you.

DMV rap is in the spotlight at this year’s Coup de cœur francophone, with Rowjay, Quadracup, and Andrike$ Black on the program. A few hours before his show at Foufounes Électriques on Thursday, PAN M 360 spoke with Andrike$ Black about his career, his creative process and his next project.

But what is DMV? In this music originating from Washington, Virginia and Maryland, artists don’t necessarily rap in tempo, adopting a high flow and a monotone. Over the past few years, this musical trend has gained considerable popularity on the French-speaking scene. Rapper Rowjay is one of the standard-bearers of this flow in Quebec.

A native of Montreal, Andrike$ Black offers a blend of rap and house sounds. At the end of September, he released his track Situation, which is a little more danceable than his previous releases. No release date has been announced for his new EP, but it should be out later this month.

PAN M 360: Where are you from and how did you get into music?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: I was born in Montreal and moved to Laval in the course of my life. It’s really in this city that my musical journey began. I started making music at the age of 15-16 thanks to a friend who created beats. Before that, I was already doing little freestyles from time to time, but it wasn’t anything serious.

PAN M 360: What triggered you to start making music in a more serious way?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: It was this friend who really pushed me to do music for real. I didn’t think it was possible for me to do it, but he showed me that it was possible. I never thought I’d get to where I am today.

PAN M 360: Where are you in your career at the moment? What are your future ambitions?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m definitely on the right track. It’s just a matter of time. I know it won’t happen overnight, but I’d like to tour, do more interviews and do a lot of showcases here and overseas.

PAN M 360: How would you describe your style of rap?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: It’s dirty with a good vibe. I often use a DMV flow. My music is perfect for car rides. I also deal with themes like love and perseverance.

PAN M 360: What’s the creative process like for a DMV rapper?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: It’s a very spontaneous process. I go with the inspiration of the moment. It’s a pretty ego trip style of rap. As I said earlier, I often write about perseverance because I think it’s really important. People shouldn’t give up on the projects they have in mind. In my case, I’m so happy that I haven’t given up on music. Without perseverance, I wouldn’t be the artist I am today. I tell myself it’s the same for my listeners, and I want to pass on that message to them.

PAN M 360: You released your single Situation last September. What’s this track about?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: On Situation, I talk about several things that were going on in my life at the time of writing. I’d lost my job and that caused a lot of problems in my life. I really talked about my life and my daily life on the track, that’s really what it’s about.

PAN M 360: Situation is the first track on your forthcoming EP. What can you tell us about your upcoming project?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but what I can say is that my next project is really going to get people moving. Again, the vibe will be really good and that’s really important. The productions are really good and people will be able to have a good time with friends.

PAN M 360: Will this EP follow in the footsteps of your album Projet 1?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: No, it’s not really going to be a sequel to Projet 1. It’s going to be more 2-step, garage and hip-hop. I’m going to explore avenues that don’t really follow the rap code. I’d already done a bit of that on my House Saga EP. My next opus is going to be an extended and improved version of that.

PAN M 360: Do you have a release date in mind?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: The project is coming very soon. I can’t reveal the date right now, but it will be this month.

PAN M 360: As part of Coup de cœur francophone, you’ll be at Foufounes Électriques on November 2, alongside rappers Rowjay and Izuku. What does this mean to you? What can we expect?

ANDRIKE$ BLACK: I’m really happy to be able to take part in CCF for the first time, and I hope it won’t be the last time. I’m definitely going to come on stage with positive energy, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the people there have a great time. People should expect a lot of action. I can’t wait to meet the public.

Alongside Rowjay and Izuku, Andrike$ Black will take to the Foufounes Électriques stage from 9pm.

Celui qui se dit avant tout un musicien s’est aussi révélé comme un des paroliers les plus poétiques de la musique québécoise.

Pierre Flynn commémore ses cinquante ans de carrière en effectuant une tournée québécoise en solo jusqu’en 2024. Le 3 novembre, il sera de passage au Gésu, à Montréal, dans le cadre des Coups de Coeurs Francophones.

Pierre Flynn est le chanteur et compositeur du groupe Octobre, de 1972 à 1982. Il a réalisé quatre albums sous son nom, a écrit des chanson pour aussi bien Louise Forestier, Pauline Julien ou Renée Martel, il a écrit des musiques de films.

Pour ma part, j’ai suivi attentivement l’évolution de Pierre Flynn.

Cégépien, boutonneux et chevelu, j’ai assisté au concert d’Octobre, en première partie du groupe britannique King Crimson, au capitole de Québec, en 1973. Par la suite, j’ai revu Octobre à plusieurs reprises et j’ai assisté à tous les concerts de monsieur Flynn à la sortie de chaque album.

Il a créé une œuvre vraiment distincte et originale. Avec des arrangements musicaux extrêmement soignés et léchés. En toute transparence, C’est un travail que j’admire, avec de minuscules bémols.

Ce concert solo nous fait revivre tous ces épisodes de la carrière de Pierre Flynn, avec parfois des accompagnements surprenants. Le spectacle est aussi rempli d’anecdotes qui contextualisent les chansons, non sans humour. Nous n’en dirons pas davantage pour vous préserver des surprises.

J’ai passé une heure avec Pierre Flynn pour faire le tour de cinquante ans de carrière. Voici notre échange.

PAN M 360 : Pierre Flynn, cinquante ans de carrière , ça donne une sorte de vertige?

Pierre Flynn : Ça m’a donné envie de me demander: « Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait? ». J’ai eu un parcours un peu chaotique . Je n’ai pas toujours été le meilleur navigateur dans les eaux tumultueuses du show business. Je suis un auteur compositeur qui travaille extrêmement lentement, mais au bout de tout cela, j’ai le sentiment d’être toujours là et d’avoir des choses à dire. Au cours de la dernière année, un ami dans le monde de la culture m’a dit: « Pourquoi ne pas faire un spectacle pour commémorer ces cinquante ans? » Et j’ai décidé de le faire.

PAN M 360: Partons du début de votre carrière avec le groupe Octobre, dont on entendra deux pièces dans le concert, qu’est-ce qui reste de l’empreinte de ce groupe qui a été très important dans les années 70?

Pierre Flynn: Certaines chansons d’Octobre mériteraient peut-être d’être effacées aujourd’hui, mais il y avait une prise de parole audacieuse, si on pense entre autres à La Maudite Machine. Je voulais toucher des enjeux sensibles.

Je dirais aussi qu’il y avait un énorme appétit pour l’intensité, nous voulions exprimer une tension, un côté exacerbé. Il fallait que le son soit fort! Des gens qui trouvaient qu’on se prenait trop au sérieux. A cette époque, on voulait vraiment expérimenter. Nous écoutions Gentle Giant , King Crimson et Yes, mais moi je préférais Charles Mingus, James Brown et Léo Ferré. Le Sacre du Printemps de Stravinsky, c’était du rock pour moi. Alors nous mélangions toutes ces influences disparates .

PAN M 360: Sans vouloir trop divulguerla matière de votre concert solo, il s’ouvre sur une chanson d’Octobre , qui est Le Vent se Lève, une pièce que je trouve particulièrement forte.

Pierre Flynn : Il y a quelque chose de très mystérieux dans cette chanson . Je ne me considère pas forcément comme un poète, mais certaines chansons, comme celle-ci, ont une dimension plus poétique. Les paroles vont puiser dans l’inconscient. Il y a des images qui ne sont pas rationnelles.

Par exemple: « Regarde les enfants aux yeux sertis d’étoiles et les hommes vieillis d’amertume . (…) Entends ce blues qui réchauffe l’hiver des passagers du vendredi soir . Ecoute l’Espagne en guitares amères ». Je ne comprends même pas comment j’ai réussi à écrire ça.

PAN M 360: Pour moi, vous êtes un des paroliers québécois le plus influencé par la poésie et par la France. Je me trompe?

Pierre Flynn: Je le dis toujours: au départ je suis musicien. Mais il fallait bien mettre des paroles sur la musique autre que des « lalala ». Étudiant au cégep en littérature, j’ai entendu Léo Ferré chanter Les Poètes de Sept Ans d’Arthur Rimbaud. J’ai été époustouflé par la puissance de ce texte avec la musique. Ça m’a probablement aiguillé vers ce genre de dimension. J’ai eu ma période Antonin Artaud, Rimbaldienne. Mais également Félix Leclerc. Au-delà des chansons les plus connues , il y a un Félix très poétique, presque mystique, qu’on peut écouter.

Neuf fois sur dix, mes chansons commencent par la musique. Puis après, je creuse un peu comme un mineur pour arriver au texte. Et parfois, ça nécessite du temps. Pour la chanson Ma Prière sur l’album Mirador, ça m’a pris plus d’un an.

Il est vrai également qu’une performance en solo fait ressortir davantage les textes. Ceux qui assisteront au spectacle s’en rendront compte en écoutant Possession, de l’album Le Parfum du Hasard.

Avec ce spectacle, je veux aussi transmettre la passion de l’écriture. Pour moi, c’est très important.

PAN M 360 : Le Parfum du Hasard est le premier disque solo que vous avez fait paraitre en 1987. Un disque qui résonne encore ?

Pierre Flynn: Je n’ai jamais été vraiment un artiste populaire. Mais ce disque s’était assez bien vendu. Il y a eu plusieurs succès à la radio , comme Possession, Sur la Route, Catalina. C’était aussi les débuts de la musique numérique avec les multiples synthétiseurs.

Avec le recul, la chanson L’Ennemi me semble la plus achevée. Au niveau musical, au-delà des synthèses, il y a un fond de blues organique . Au niveau du texte, elle a pris une « twist » dans sa pertinence.

« Il (l’ennemi) est là, le doigt sur la gâchette, il guette la planète (…) veut voler ton regard farouche, les yeux de ta bouche , tes souliers de liberté. Il veut voler ton envie de rire ».

Dans le contexte actuel, les tensions géopolitiques, j’ai l’impression qu’elle vibre différemment.

J’ai toujours fait attention d’aller au-delà de l’actualité politique immédiate, pour que les chansons ne se démodent pas.

PAN M 360 : Quatre ans plus tard, paraît Les Jardins de Babylone, le deuxième album. Il y a beaucoup de chansons qui parlent de voyages. La route, les voyages, il me semble, c’est une des constantes de votre travail.

Pierre Flynn: Il est aussi beaucoup question d’amour avec Savoir Aimer , qui traite de l’engagement dans une relation, ou En Cavale, une tentative de chanson plus simple, car parfois , pour moi, la complexité est plus facile que la simplicité.

Mais oui, sur ce disque, il y a Les Splendeurs et Lettre de Venise, qui racontent mes expéditions en Irlande, en Grèce et en Italie. Je deviens comme un reporter, je suis fasciné, j’observe et je partage mes émotions.

PAN M 360: Dix ans plus tard arrive Mirador, en 2001. Nous sommes dans un contexte social et politique totalement différent.

Pierre Flynn: La première chanson de Mirador, La Romance du XXe Siècle , raconte ce tournant. C’est le XXe siècle qui bascule et où s’en va-t-on après ? J’ai aussi essayé le « spoken word » . Je demande à ma fille : « Auras-tu la paix et la douceur de vivre? » Je poursuis la réflexion avec Ma Petite Guerrière, dédié à ma fille unique. C’est un album sur la force de la vie et ses étapes jusqu’à la mort. Il y a bien sûr la chanson Croire, qui est un hommage aux poètes Gilbert Langevin et Gaston Miron, que j’ai eu la chance de connaître un peu. Avec cet hommage, je voulais en même temps me détacher d’eux, muter dans le nouveau siècle. Je suis très fier de cette chanson, une de celles que je préfère dans mon modeste corpus.

PAN M 360: Et on arrive à 2015 avec Sur La Terre.

Pierre Flynn: C’est l’album dont je suis le plus satisfait. C’est une espèce de chronique de ma vie, de mon ressenti, dans ces années-là. Vous savez, je n’ai aucun plan de match quand j’amorce la création d’un album. Les chansons arrivent un peu par hasard. L’unité ou le manque d’unité se ressent à la fin. Le dernier homme est une chanson sur la solitude. Si loin si proche est une continuation de Ma petite Guerrière, qui est maintenant une jeune adulte au moment d’écrire la chanson.

PAN M 360: L’album- et votre concert solo aussi- se termine par Capitaine ô Capitaine, une chanson à multiples sens.

Pierre Flynn: C’est une chanson folk à trois quatre accords. C’est la métaphore du bateau qui navigue à la recherche de quelque chose. Mais c’est aussi une métaphore sur l’avenir de la planète . « Capitaine ô capitaine, nous avons perdu le nord . Capitaine ramène le navire à bon port ». Il y a quand même une ouverture vers l’espérance.

PAN M 360 : La question qui tue: y aura-t-il un autre album de Pierre Flynn?

Pierre Flynn: Oui. Mais je ne sais pas quand(grand éclat de rire). Les gens connaissent ma lenteur, ma réputation est faite. Je me bats tous les jours avec la tentation de la passivité. Mais j’offre une nouvelle chanson dans mon spectacle. Il y en aura d’autres. Je suis toujours vivant, j’ai encore une bonne voix, alors je vais essayer de ne pas trop niaiser avec la puck.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary is the eloquent embodiment of the virtuoso musician of our time.

Discerning on stage despite the extreme concentration demanded by her repertoire, open to different musical styles, the young French trumpeter proves herself a model interpreter of the classical repertoire but also a luminous improviser. The classical side of her career seems to prevail in our perceptions… until further notice, as this twenty-something also excels in modern jazz.

This Thursday, November 2, she performs at the Maison symphonique alongside organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez, titular of the great organs of the city of San Diego. Together, they will perform works by Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Maurice Ravel, Frederic Mompou, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov, Alessandro Marcello, Astor Piazzolla, Modeste Moussorgski and George Gershwin. A program that speaks volumes about our interviewee’s openness and eclecticism.

PAN M 360 : We know that you’re a young trumpeter who’s very much in the spotlight on the European scene. We also know that you’ve already been to Montreal a few times, since your professional debut in 2018.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Exactly. And I’m back for a third time with this duo concert with organ.

PAN M 360: In classical music, the trumpet is mostly associated with the Baroque repertoire, but you obviously draw from far beyond this period!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes. I’ve done Baroque, I even made a Baroque album when I was 13, and I’ve done a lot since then. I continue to do so, and it’s true that we don’t have a huge repertoire for the trumpet. We have two great classical concertos, Hummel and Haydn – which I played in Montreal. I also like to steal repertoire from other instruments and transcribe it, because I was a bit frustrated at not having much repertoire for my own. So I do a lot of transcriptions, but not everything fits with the trumpet. You still have to make a selection.

PAN M 360: Who makes the transcriptions? How do you go about it?

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: It depends on the project. As far as jazz is concerned, when I did my album on the United States and France, I called on Bill Elliott, an American arranger who also works with Barbara Hannigan – who is truly remarkable. Jérôme Ducros did some great arrangements for me too, and I’ll be working with others on future projects. I like to change because I love working with different people because everyone has their own style.

PAN M 360: As you say, not all transcriptions are feasible, and transposing the trumpet to pieces composed for other instruments or the human voice is no guarantee of success.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, in general, the repertoire for the voice works quite well, because the trumpet is similar to the voice. Afterwards, I really wanted to transcribe pieces for violin, but in the end, I find that it doesn’t work at all on the trumpet. You don’t have the bow strokes, you don’t have the bows that bite the strings, you don’t have that with the trumpet. What works on the trumpet is melody, the more lyrical pieces.

PAN M 360: When you play Gershwin, for example, it works well.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, because in Gershwin, there’s this jazz side that works really well with the trumpet.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about classical trumpet and jazz trumpet. Since the early days of Wynton Marsalis, i.e. some 40 years ago, classical and jazz trumpets have become increasingly complementary. We imagine you’re very aware of this trend, which is becoming increasingly important these days: more and more classical trumpeters are practicing both written and improvised music.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary : That’s true, and it’s not great to insist on putting artists in boxes, wishing they belonged to a precise style. For example, I made an album of pieces by Astor Piazzolla, whose style is unspeakable. Obviously, it’s tango, but it’s also classical, improvisational and jazz-like. Take Leonard Bernstein, too: he can’t be pigeonholed either.

PAN M 360 : Needless to say, you improvise in public or for yourself!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary : Of course, I do classical and jazz, I started both at the same time. Yesterday, for example, I was in a jazz concert, it was improvisation from A to Z. I have a quartet made up of guitarist Hugo Lippi, pianist Vincent Bourgeyx, bassist Thomas Bramerie and drummer Franck Agulhon.

PAN M 360 : Needless to say, you improvise in public or for yourself!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary : Of course, I do classical and jazz, I started both at the same time. Yesterday, for example, I was in a jazz concert, it was improvisation from A to Z. I have a quartet made up of guitarist Hugo Lippi, pianist Vincent Bourgeyx, bassist Thomas Bramerie and drummer Franck Agulhon.

PAN M 360: So, you’ve developed both techniques at the same time – you have both classical and jazz trumpet models.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, of course, it’s always been part of my life, I’ve always needed to do both, because it brings me so much. It’s completely different, the demands aren’t the same at all. At the same time, it’s still music and I see it as a global thing. As long as the music’s good, I’ll take it, whatever the style.

PAN M 360: However, the first perception people have of you on this side of the Atlantic is that you’re a classical trumpeter. Obviously, you’re also a jazzwoman, so we’d like to know more about this side of your career.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, I do more classical concerts. I’ve done a few springboards like the Jazz à Marciac festival. I’m trying to develop that more and more, but it’s true that I do more concerts with classical orchestras. But even when I play with classical orchestras, I like to do an improvisation on a theme as an encore.

PAN M 360: Which is a fair return because, anyway, improvisation existed until the XIXᵉ century and now we’re bringing it back.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, that’s right. And then anyway, even, I mean Bach improvised, Mozart improvised, Beethoven improvised. And then the composers separated from the performers.

PAN M 360: So, you really see yourself in both. Your personal perception of yourself is that you don’t have a fundamental stylistic box.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: No, I don’t feel like it at all.

PAN M 360: For many composers and performers, sticking strictly to one type of repertoire may no longer correspond to their idea of advanced music.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Of course. To attract people to classical music and jazz too, I think we need to open up to a whole range of styles. I don’t know about you, but in France, several classical festivals are starting to do just that.

PAN M 360: It’s the same here, it’s opening up more and more. The two approaches are gradually coming together. One day, it will become normal to do both, and you’re an excellent example of this growing trend.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: It’s richer, too, so why deprive yourself?

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the Montreal duo concert with Raúl Prieto Ramírez, presented by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. You’ll be playing works by Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Maurice Ravel, Frederic Mompou, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov, Alessandro Marcello, Astor Piazzolla, Modeste Moussorgski and George Gershwin.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: I told you about my eclecticism and my desire to mix many styles. And this is really what we’re going to do. I’ve never played with the organist, but I believe, after having exchanged many suggestions with him, that the program reflects our personalities. So we came up with this program. It’s great because it also means the audience never gets bored, and gets a sort of global view of the music.

We’ll be playing Viviani, Ravel and Rachmaninov, two of whose arias we’ll be playing, as well as a lovely piece by Mompou, which isn’t very well known and isn’t at all made for the organ… and which sounds incredible with the organ. We also have this baroque concerto by Marcello, which I really like. We have Liszt and Moussorgski for solo organ, and we also have Piazzolla and Gershwin. These are pieces that are very close to my heart, and I think the same goes for the organist.

PAN M 360: You conclude with Gerswhin’s The Man I Love, a well-known ballad. Was this an editorial choice?

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Maybe… and then I can improvise. All in all, I don’t think we should put up any barriers. That’s how I feel about it. And that’s how I feel free.

PAN M 360: Free in an act of communication!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: The main thing for me is the relationship with the audience. For me, a concert must be a moment of sharing.

PAN M 360: Another interesting thing about you is the way you present yourself on stage. You’re definitely not into austerity! You’ve got that showbiz side, which is great, and you’re not the only one. Many virtuosos of your generation, moreover, are less stuck in classical decorum than previous generations.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, but it’s not really calculated in my case, it’s a bit in spite of myself, so I don’t ask myself too many questions about it. It’s natural, it’s who I am. Anyway, you have to move with the times!

PROGRAM :

Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Trumpet Sonata No. 1 in C major (7 min)

Ravel, Vocalise-study in the form of a Habanera (3 min)

Frederic Mompou, Damunt de tu només les flors [Above you, only the flowers] (4 min)

Franz Liszt, Valse de Méphisto no 1, S. 514, for solo organ (transc. Ramírez)

Rachmaninov, 6 romances, Op. 4: IV. Georgian Song (4 min.)

Rachmaninov, Fourteen romances, Op. 34: V. Arion (3 min)

Intermission

Alessandro Marcello, Concerto for oboe in D minor (10 min)’ Piazzolla, Ave Maria (Maria)
Piazzolla, Ave Maria (5 min)

Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition, excerpts, for solo organ (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov, transcr. Ramírez)

Baba Yaga
The Great Gate of Kiev

Gershwin, The Man I Love (4 min)

THIS PROGRAM IS PRESENTED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 7:30 P.M., AT THE MAISON SYMPHONIQUE.

INFOS & TICKETS HERE

Freed for a time during the pandemic, pianist Marianne Trudel soon returned to her lifestyle immersed in an insatiable passion for music, matched by the workaholism she’s known for : this autumn she’s releasing 3 albums that she visualizes as a triangle : solo À pas de loup, duo Dédé Java Espiritu with the excellent drummer and professor emeritus John Hollenbeck, Trio Time Poem : La joie de l’éphémère with the same percussionist colleague and bassist / double bassist Rémi-Jean Leblanc. The great and full nature, the total fragility of existence, loss, the celebration of life are the pieces of the pianistic and compositional engine perfected by the 46-year-old jazzwoman, composer, improviser, arranger, bandleader, producer, undoubtedly one of the most dynamic on the Montreal scene.

PAN M 360 : Commemoration, therefore.

Marianne Trudel: It’s a bit of a pretext, because these three albums were conceived in the same period, the famous pandemic. I was waiting for the concerts to start up again. A series of concerts with John (Hollenbeck) had been postponed three times, a series of trio concerts had also been postponed a few times. In short, I was teaching online, waiting for activities to resume. At the same time, I set out to finish a doctorate I’d started ten years ago, but had put on hold because I was too busy with concerts and teaching. I’d been given a final ultimatum (after ten years, you have to file), and it was getting on my nerves.

PAN M 360: If we understand correctly, several factors delayed the release of these albums.

Marianne Trudel: It might have been a good idea to release them a few months apart, but at a certain point, I said to myself “It’s so three”, I really see them as a triangle, as three important points in the same patent. It’s three facets, three complements, I’m not sure. But they go together in my head, even if they’re very different. They’re all very nature-inspired, with John as the linking element between the duo and the trio. I said to myself, “If I’m going to go into debt, I’m going to go into debt for real, let’s go! I normally only release one at a time, but here I thought, “Here, this could be fun.”

PAN M 360: So there’s a duo, a trio and… À pas de loup

Marianne Trudel: A solo album, yes. I wanted to dare something with slowed-down, enveloping music, a little less jazz. It’s not a full-blown jazz album, these compositions are at the crossroads of classical music, contemporary music, jazz of course and other patents. It was important for me to do things this way, because I felt I was being bombarded from all sides. I needed a shelter, and I wanted to share that shelter.

PAN M 360: Minimalist, calm, this album is indeed a refuge on the borders of silence.

Marianne Trudel: I’m in love with silence, maybe it’s a paradox. Ever since I was a child, I’ve needed silence, I love silence. Sometimes it’s confronting as a musician: you want to create, to contribute something, and at the same time, you already find the world quite noisy. So you need this reset. The title of my solo album is À pas de loup and the subtitle is Quiet sound for a loud world. It’s really in a spirit of calm, gentleness and delicacy. I wanted something that vibrated on a different frequency. We slow down the engine and listen to ourselves think.

PAN M 360: There’s mostly piano in À pas de loup, but there’s also harmonium.

Marianne Trudel: The instrument was in Pierre Marchand’s studio. Usually, harmoniums are much smaller, maybe three octaves, but this one was really 88 notes, I’ve never seen such a harmonium. I sit at this instrument with the pedals, the bellows system and all that. The feeling I got after three seconds! I just started pedaling on it and let the sound come out. It was so enveloping, so reassuring. I said to the sound engineer, “Let’s go, get your mics out!

PAN M 360: And then the piano-percussion duo with John Hollenbeck, Dédé Java Espiritu, whose material is being played these days.

Marianne Trudel: There’s a lot of improvisation in our music. It goes in all directions. There’s super melodic stuff, there’s super groovy stuff, there’s noisier, freer, more experimental stuff. John and I have developed a great musical complicity together.

PAN M 360: And then there’s the trio: Time Poem: la joie de l’éphémère.

Marianne Trudel: It’s with John Hollenbeck, drums, who’s a bit of a binder for my projects, and Rémi-Jean Leblanc, double bass and electric bass. With me, he’d always played only double bass, but this time, I wanted both, and it’s super fun too, super bright.

PAN M 360: This album is the first to be released from this triptych. Born under what circumstances?

Marianne Trudel : During the pandemic, I was musically paralyzed for the first time in my artistic life. As someone who normally writes every day, I couldn’t get out a single note. Without the concerts, it lost all meaning. One day, I came face to face with a sound engineer I adore, Rob Heaney, while recording a piano track for a Vancouver artist. Rob had recorded several of my previous albums, and he’s a guy who’s passionate about music and in great demand – Cirque du Soleil, Patrick Watson and so on. “I said to him, “Look, Rob, I haven’t written a note in a while. He says, “Come on, that’s not like you at all! Call me and we’ll book a studio session. You’ll have no choice but to get back to work.” Just what I needed!

PAN M 360: And how did work get back on track?

Marianne Trudel: It was the summer of 2021, and I left the next day for Gaspésie for my vacation. Here I am in the mini-cottage I’d rented to go hiking for a week. Before going to bed, I go on Facebook and see messages on Facebook. “Rob, why did you leave us?” My heart is pounding and I can’t sleep all night. Very early the next morning, I call François Richard, a close friend of Rob’s. “He died at the wheel of his car. Cardiac arrest.” It gave me quite a shock. So I locked myself up in the little cottage, hardly ever setting foot outside. And I wrote nine pieces in nine days for my trio. I slept maybe ten hours in all, and collapsed at the end. I’ve never had a trip like that, it was day and night, it was very exhilarating.

PAN M 360: The tragic death of this sound engineer was therefore a powerful trigger!

Marianne Trudel: The album is called La joie de l’éphémère because I’ve always been very sensitive to the fragility of life. And here, I had it right in my face. It was a way of celebrating my good fortune to be alive. And then there’s the whole ephemeral thing that I love about improvised music: you can have a magical moment, it goes off into space and it’s over, it won’t be touched. So a tragic event was transformed into light. I dedicated this record to Rob. I called John, Rémi and Jean: “Listen, I’m writing music, I want to do this quickly.” That’s when it happened. We went into the studio, did it in two days, and then started playing gigs. It all fits together.

PAN M 360: So you’ve fully regained the momentum you lost during the pandemic. And so quickly repaired this small crack in this edifice you’ve been building since the early 2000s!

Marianne Trudel: About six months ago, someone asked me how long I’d been in the business. I realized then that I’d been playing piano for 40 years, and that my first album came out about 20 years ago. Even today, I put in 60-hour weeks with school, my booking and my productions. Why not underline that? Solo, duo, trio: three facets of the pandemic, a testimony to this period with their different and complementary colors.

crédit photo: Michel Pinault