LISTEN / SHARE / BUY “OUESSANT (PIANO)” HERE
AUBADES, THE POST-CLASSICAL ICON’S FIRST ENSEMBLE RECORD,
OUT NOW VIA ARTS & CRAFTS
BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE
PERFORMS IN TORONTO ON JANUARY 20 AT KOERNER HALL FOR 21 C MUSIC FESTIVAL
“From its opening notes, it whisks listeners away. On the new album from the esteemed post-classical pianist, Blais is in perpetual bloom, moved by life's beauty and nature's song.” - Exclaim!
“...aubades finds Blais conducting a 12-person ensemble, filling in his beautiful piano melodies with lush instrumentation that brings his music to new heights.” - CBC MUSIC
“The first new album from the post-classical Quebec pianist since 2019′s soundtrack for Xavier Dolan’s Matthias et Maxime is a serene, uplifting outing done in major keys. Sounds like springtime.” - The Globe and Mail
Photo Credit : John Londono // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Fresh off winning the Best International Indie Music Video at the UKMVA and Best Instrumental Album at L'ADSIQ, celebrated composer and pianist Jean-Michel Blais is sharing a dreamy piano-only version of the buoyant single, "ouessant" from his recent album aubades. Where the album was built around the concept of an "aubade," a song between lovers sung at dawn, “ouessant (piano)”, is a stripped-down and felted version of an already existing piece, like a soothing solitude after a celebration.
Blais says of the track, “‘ouessant (piano)’ in residence at the Eskal, Yann Tiersan pours me a pint. The immensity of the place reminds me of our Cape Breton. Implacable nature will always be so sublime. The Celtic airs remind me of the Andean ones, the saline one, the marine one. And it is after a hectic day that I rested on the island of Tiersen.”
Jean-Michael Blais will perform for the first time in Toronto since releasing aubades on January 20 at Koerner Hall for 21 C Music Festival. Blais will be joined by Nadia Monczak (violin), Lorraine Gauthier (cello) and Benjamin Deschamps (clarinet, bass clarinet, flute and soprano saxophone). Tickets can be found HERE.
LISTEN / SHARE / BUY “OUESSANT (PIANO)” HERE
MORE ABOUT AUBADES
aubades marks the Montreal-born musician’s transition frosm pianist to composer, as he writes for an ensemble for the first time in his 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 daybreak, a dawn serenade.
WATCH / SHARE “AMOUR” / “OUESSANT” HERE
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 two Polaris Music Prize nominations, a #1 on the Billboard Classical chart and a Time Magazine top ten album of the year.
WATCH / SHARE “PASSEPIED” HERE
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 500 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,” 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.”
WATCH / SHARE ‘MAKING OF AUBADES’ DOCUMENTARY HERE
In aubades, every instrument is given moments of expression to an extent that took the players by surprise. Blais says, “there’s often been this dominant 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.” He 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.
BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE
2023 PERFORMANCES
Jan 20 - Toronto, ON - Koerner Hall | 21 C Music Festival w/ 4 piece - TICKETS
Jan 29 - Quebec City, QC - Grand Théâtre Québec w/ 12 piece Ensemble - TICKETS