We’ve seen Louis-Jean Cormier on stage enough times to know that he never disappoints. What would surprise him would be a bad show, but he manages to surprise us with this new solo, which stopped at the Outremont Theater for the first of two performances on Thursday night. A feat that brings us back to the essence of music: a singer, a guitar, lights, an audience.
Posted at 11:23 am
With his concentrated presence and mastery of his instrument, Louis-Jean Cormier completely inhabits the stage and never seems “alone”. Rarely are artists able to hold a space like this for nearly two hours in the old-fashioned way that Brassens or Félix Leclerc would have done, of which he is a worthy songwriting heir.
With no new material but rich in a repertoire that allows him to break new ground, Louis-Jean Cormier embarked on this last fall on Passages Secrets 2 – Passages Secrets was the title of his first excellent solo six years ago. But this one is perhaps even more minimalistic and intimate, which we didn’t really think was possible, and contrasts with his just-concluded tour of musicians that was simultaneously dance, rock and soar. .
For the entire duration of the show, the singer-songwriter therefore remains in the middle of the stage and sings around twenty songs practically without a break. He doesn’t even switch guitars, keeping the rhythm without the aid of a pedal or machine, just with the amplified sound of his feet on a board.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Louis-Jean Cormier in a show without artifice
It’s small and deliberately reduced, yet the sound fills the entire room in all its richness. The singer creates effects with his voice, which he modulates at will, creates a distinctive syncopation effect in a melody with a single mini-silence, strums chords or caresses his guitar as needed, so many tiny nuances that change everything and keep you in Breath.
“Outremont, you may feel like you’ve only heard one song tonight,” warns the singer, after chaining together two tracks from his recent albums, L’au-là and La photo, at the start of the show and doing give us a little courage at any time. And it’s true that his way of weaving the songs together creates a rich and engaging musical maelstrom that, however, makes it difficult to show appreciation or enthusiasm.
Here we listen more actively and communicate in a soft and cozy atmosphere, supported by the scenography and lighting by Mathieu Roy, who creates subtle effects of shadows and moving shapes from just two panels installed on each side of the singer .
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Louis-Jean Cormier is touring Quebec with this solo exhibition.
Desiring to have music invade every corner of our mind, Louis-Jean Cormier, contrary to his habit, is stingy with intervention. The songs flow and he strings them together without presenting them, mixing eras and albums, moving from a rather discreet Grandes Artères (Tête première) to an unexpected Karkwa (Escape from Fate) via something little known (The Wolves Too shedding tears of joy, taken from the 1969 scrapbook). He can also increase the pressure alone with Bull’s Eye, St. Michel or 100 meter hurdles and crystallize the emotions with Croire en rien and Tout croche, a doppelganger that tears away a few tears.
“It’s a show that touches me,” the singer-songwriter tells us, before moving on to an audience request — Karkwa’s Le Bon Sens for us on Thursday. “I feel like I’m naked. »
It is true that this evening “more in poetry than in decibels” is a dangerous exercise, highlighting a still obscure repertoire filled with complicated loves, bereavements, regrets and existential doubts. The singer can’t help but reveal himself there and opens up a secret passage for us “between the tones and the words”, he explained humorously.
But this path also goes in both directions. Before ending the evening with The only question and letting us “reintegrate” our bodies, Louis-Jean Cormier dedicated a song by Vigneault, Quand vous mourrez de nos amours, to one of his uncles, who died exactly a year after his wife. And it’s a whole room that’s been tuning in to him for the last two hours, which in turn opened his heart to him.