BAIE SAINT PAUL | The pianist offered a sublime and magnificent moment of grace to the Festif festival-goers this Saturday! Let yourself be lulled by the divine melodies.
• Also read: Le Festif!: a great program for the second day
The sun beat down on “the most beautiful stage in the world”, at least the most beautiful in Baie-Saint-Paul and the Festif! … Some time earlier, Gawbé had expertly set the table on the quay by presenting a show that focused on arrangements with a more ‘soft morning’ spirit, rather than his usual rockier performances. At the mouth of the Gouffre and the river, about twenty people had paddled up to watch the concert from the river, from their kayaks and canoes or comfortably seated on their paddle boards. The standing crowd, more than large, literally overcrowded, untied their legs in sweet anticipation.
Credit Samuel Gaudreault
The context was just perfect. Everything was ready for the birth of magic.
For the first time in Baie-Saint-Paul, the long-awaited Jean-Michel Blais has settled alone behind his piano and plays the first notes of the slow Ad Claritatem Domine. Time stood still, there was only the essential: the rush of the wind, the laughter of the children in the distance, the gentle murmur of the waves and the immense beauty of his music.
Credit Samuel Gaudreault
He was then quietly joined by his musicians Nadia Monczak (violin), Lorraine Gauthier-Giroux (cello) and Benjamin Deschamps (clarinet, bass clarinet, transverse flute and soprano saxophone) as they gently began the piece absinthe.
“There are so many people! I didn’t think there would be anyone last night to see the world awake!” exclaimed the pianist, half charming, half mocking, before wryly apologizing for the glorious setting sun while the weather forecast announced rain.
Credit Samuel Gaudreault
All the elements seemed to be coordinated to offer festival-goers this moment of great beauty. “We’re outside experiencing something really unique, feel free to enjoy the surrounding sounds,” he recalls.
The quartet presented several pieces from their latest album ‘Aubades’, released in 2022, in which ‘each piece is meant to be an awakening’, to an admirably silent crowd, appreciation and listening. Murmures, a piece in which he wanted to introduce each instrument individually, proved another moment of grace; the luminous flâneur, reminiscent of the moment when one wanders at dawn; the delicate and elegant Passepied, both a Debussy nod and a piece inspired by a baroque dance. Many smiled on delighted faces during this heartfelt rendition, which received warm applause.
Credit Samuel Gaudreault
The complicity between the 39-year-old artist and his musicians, whom he liked to tease, was palpable. We felt it all the more in the finale of “Nina”, where he somehow draws a parallel between the difficulty of learning to write for other instruments and the difficulty of a child in learning their first steps. One by one, the cellist, the wind multi-instrumentalist, and the violinist approached to play the final bars of the piece gently with him at the piano. A moment full of charm and complicity that enchanted.
Jean-Michel Blais Outsiders then played the piano alone. The silence was so great that it seemed as if the sound of the waves accompanied it.
Credit Samuel Gaudreault
When the quartet performed the great piece “Le Souper”, the sky was cloudy and the breeze got a little cooler. Some were no doubt aware that a veritable window of glorious weather had opened, allowing the artist to depict this moment of great beauty. Doux and finally Nostos as an encore rounded off this unique concert.
Jean-Michel Blais had inevitably seduced.