FROM UPCOMING LP, aubades,
THE POST-CLASSICAL ICON’S FIRST ENSEMBLE RECORD
LISTEN / SHARE "murmures" HERE
BUY / STREAM “murmures” HERE
Photo Credit : William Arcand // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
aubades, the new album from post-classical piano icon Jean-Michel Blais, marks the Montreal-based musician’s transition from pianist to composer, as he collaborates with an ensemble for the first time in his recording career. Written during the pandemic and following a breakup, Blais has used his distinctive musical voice to create a defiantly uplifting record with glistening instrumental textures and warm major tonalities. The album’s title refers to the “aubade”, a Middle-Ages morning love song about lovers separating at dawn and will come out via Arts & Crafts.
Today the composer shares the album’s first single, “murmures”. It is described by Blais as a tribute to Philip Glass. A minimal piano is joined by fluttering strings and winds resembling birds in flight. The release date, tracklist, and cover art for the album will be announced later this month. It will be the first studio album from the pianist since 2019's Original Soundtrack for Xavier Dolan’s Matthias et Maxime which received a special jury prize at Cannes Soundtrack Festival and the 2018 Polaris Music Prize Shortlisted LP, Dans ma main.
Jean-Michel Blais has been a celebrated figure in the post-classical piano world since the release of his critically-acclaimed debut album II in 2016. He attended Quebec’s prestigious Trois-Rivières Music Conservatory but left after two years of study, exhausted by the restraints of the traditional music curriculum. Blais then travelled widely before retraining as a special education teacher. Whilst working as a teacher, he returned to music on his own terms, rediscovering his passion through improvising on the piano. These improvisations formed the basis of a recording career that has earned him a shortlist for the 2018 Polaris Music Prize, a #1 on the Billboard Classical chart and a Time Magazine top ten album of the year.
Despite the difficult global and personal backdrop, Blais described the time writing this album as a “fruitful moment of creativity for me. We started having hares in the park, beautiful butterflies flying everywhere. It was a time of lots of blossoming, and also a moment when I blossomed from being a pianist into a composer.” Musical ideas captured in over 600 recorded piano improvisations were transformed by Blais into 11 compositions performed by a 12-person ensemble. During the composition process, Blais collaborated with Alex Weston, former music assistant to Philip Glass. The musicians were recorded with close-up microphones, creating a richly intimate atmosphere that captures the human behind each instrument, from the mechanics of the woodwind keys to the snap of a double bass string.
Blais also consciously found himself leaning towards major tonalities, which he believes are surprisingly rare in modern classical piano music. “With this album, I was definitely responding to certain trends in modern classical music,” Blais reckons. “For example, the fact that the solo piano tends to sound melancholic. That’s good, but I’ve done that already, I wanted to go beyond that.”
In aubades, every instrument is given moments of expression. Blais was inspired by more democratic musical textures from the Renaissance and Middle Ages, as well as the social democratic artistic ethos of the English 19th century poet, designer and activist William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. “I tried to give a moment to every instrument, like solos or bring outs. For example, I did things like giving the Second Violin some moments on their own too. Usually they are there to support and accompany the First Violin, but when the Second Violin player came to look at the music, she thought there was a mistake. She was the only violin playing. I’d have to tell her ‘It’s not a mistake, it’s your time to shine” , Blais says, “there’s often been this idea in classical music that one instrument is the chief, the king of all the instruments, and the others are in the background merely supporting.”
Jean-Michel Blais will be taking aubades on the road in 2022. Tour dates can be found HERE.
