Christian Bernard is a musician and studio technician well known in the Montreal music world. He has worked on the technical side for Corneille, the Cowboys fringants and the McGarrigle sisters. Black Lotus is his first opus. In it, he teases out the piano in a neoclassical style, but in a way that’s a step back from today’s abundance of Philip Glass-like offerings. Bernard is more of a post-Satie school, a style that already has something retro about it, for before the current wave of Glassian meditative pianism, there was the wave inspired by the Frenchman. While Bernard doesn’t invent anything, he does manage to inject a certain authenticity into his nine short introspections, which are quite enjoyable. Rainy days are coming in a month or two. Black Lotus will be a perfect accompaniment.
The album will be available on August 30th.