Instrumental music has become almost inseparable from popular music. The last proof: Ludmila, new album by Ingrid St-Pierre, in which she retraces childhood memories in “the great skies” without words. Or almost. Interview.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
Lake Temiscouata. The fruits that mark the passing of the seasons. And The big skiestitle of the last song of his new instrumental album which appears this Friday.
What Ingrid St-Pierre retains and remembers from her childhood, she makes music…without words. ” To me, Ludmila is not an instrumental album. It’s music to the picture in my head! “, she specifies.
“I wanted to clarify and immortalize memories. Having children takes you back to childhood. And you have to mourn. I can’t give the childhood I had in the woods and in front of the lake to Cabano. »
Ludmila is nevertheless accompanied by a few words. Starting with its title, which alludes to the ballerina Ludmilla Chiriaeff, designated a historical figure in Quebec just last Tuesday. “My mother paints ballerinas”, first explains Ingrid St-Pierre.
Another important memory: his grandmother’s house. “It was my quiet lair. Upstairs, there was a blue room where there was a doll I called Lumina. »
It was failing to correctly pronounce Ludmilla as her grandmother did, whom the public already knows very well thanks to the ballad Twines – the one that made Gregory Charles cry last Sunday at Star Academy –, where Ingrid St-Pierre is saddened by the thread of memory that becomes confused with Alzheimer’s disease. The death of his grandmother then inspired him to write the song The snowy.
Memory
Memory is still at the heart of Ludmila, corn Ingrid St-Pierre found that she could reveal more intimacy without writing lyrics.
I felt a great freedom and I allowed myself to give myself more.
Ingrid St-Pierre
In particular, she has drawn on the many recordings she has accumulated on her phone over the years, so much so that we hear her son tell her that he loves her “in love” on I collect you as well as her mother-in-law who sings a lullaby in Vietnamese to her daughter Namiko.
The room the wonderers is a tribute to people who embellish the daily lives of those around them in the shadows, including Ingrid St-Pïerre’s mother, who traces hearts in the snow when she runs while Cabano is still asleep.
Get to the point
Ingrid St-Pierre could have made an album essentially piano and voice, but she rejected this direction with the director Philippe Brault. On Say goodbye, we hear the strings of a banjo on the Indian harmonium. Here and there, there are sweet electro scents.
Ingrid St-Pierre wanted to avoid any predictable melody, and the refinement work had to take precedence over the dressing. “I didn’t want a sound that was too polished, syrupy or blue flower,” she says.
For the sake of cohesion, Ingrid St-Pierre has discarded songs, of which nothing less than a Agnus Dei. Young, she asked to learn Latin, she says. “My mother and I loved Latin and Gregorian chants. »
We nevertheless find on the album a piece which has the title small choir. And why is it rather Ctenophore (i.e. a marine organism similar to a jellyfish) who opens the album? “I am a water girl, explains Ingrid St-Pierre. I grew up in front of Lake Témiscouata, one of the deepest in Quebec. It’s emblematic of my childhood. It was natural to start the album with this song. »
As for the finale, it is called The big skies. “I miss seeing far,” says Ingrid St-Pierre.
Next summer, however, she will spend it with her little ones at her mother’s in Cabano. Before, she will take part in the tour in tribute to Georges Brassens with Valérie Blais, Luc De Larochellière, Michel Rivard and Saratoga. Her own tour will follow in 2023.
Before his album small beachpublished in 2019, Ingrid St-Pierre experienced a period of exhaustion during which she wore a “black belt” of guilt as a mother.
Doubt will always haunt me. But I make it a driving force and not a brake as it has been for a long time in my life.
Ingrid St-Pierre
“I was my own worst enemy. I became much softer and found a balance. […] At the same time, people who don’t doubt scare me,” she adds.
From these words, we can understand that Ingrid St-Pierre is a being of light and of great sensitivity, especially in relation to the passage of time. “I’m moved by the beginnings and the endings,” she admits.
With Ludmila, she didn’t need words to once again tie strings through memories she doesn’t want to see wither. But she invites people to find their own words and tie their own strings.