Élizabeth Provencher (EP) hails from Victoriaville, studied at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent and then at McGill. A solid background, but one underpinned by obvious talent and keen musical intelligence. Le convoi des oies is the young lady’s second full-length quintet album (the aptly named Quintet EP), following Le monde adulte in 2021 and a three-track eponymous mini-plaque in 2017.
Provencher expresses herself in a competent jazz that smells of sweet nostalgia. This nostalgia is nevertheless adorned with light and a reasonable dose of optimism. In this, Le convoi resembles the previous album, which also demonstrated this pleasant character. Provencher’s saxophone is voluble and unashamedly asserts its dominating personality throughout the music, which is always confidently steered by the Quintet’s very intimate mutual listening. That said, in Le convoi des oies, Provencher handles the harmonic pen a little more boldly than before, painting complex harmonic backdrops in many places, allowing her instrument to glide over them or even elsewhere to perform a virtuoso aerial ballet, all wings spread. The result is a total work that testifies to an expanded maturity, although the seriousness of the artist’s approach has never been in doubt.
You may hear Provencher elsewhere, whether with the duo Bel and Quinn, Émile Proulx-Cloutier, the Burning BRASs Band (her other baby) or in Serge Denoncourt’s musical Hair. But I think it’s in this traditional chamber music format, and with her loyal colleagues, that you’ll get the full measure of Élisabeth Provencher’s very solid artistic personality.
Élisabeth Provencher: Saxophone and compositions
Victoria Hebbard: Trumpet and flugelhorn
Alexis Elina: Piano
Summer Kodama: Double bass
Noam Guerrier-Freud: Drums
