Good ideas always bear good fruit: two years after the beautiful disc recorded in tandem by Simon Beaudry, especially associated with traditional music, and the pianist Philippe Prud’homme, it is now the repertoire of the group Le Vent du Nord that is enveloped, illuminated and transported by classical arrangements. Which gives rise to magnificent nuptials.
Intended to underline the 20 years of existence of the group Le Vent du Nord, the album The voices of the wind with strings and piano already says everything there is to know to understand the project. Philippe Prud’homme is at the piano and signs the arrangements for this instrument. Olivier Demers wrote those performed by Le Quatuor Trad (Marie-Pierre Lecault, Émilie Brûlé, Josianne Laberge and Sophie Coderre). What are the guys from the North Wind doing? They lay their voices on this music, forming a superb choir, and leaving it to their collaborators to touch the instruments.
Simon Beaudry, Nicolas Boulerice, André Brunet, Réjean Brunet and Olivier Demers cover on this disc 11 songs published in more traditional forms over the past 20 years. By relying almost exclusively on response songs, they give each other all the space they need to make their little choir shine, which, at times, evokes a Renaissance choir (Louisbourg).
The connection between classical and traditional music is done here with a disconcerting naturalness. And frankly amazing. The piano is accurate, even in its desire for modernity, while the strings perform subtle and poignant shifts which, on the melodic and harmonic levels, embrace centuries of Western music. Without losing the folk roots of the pieces.
The voices of the wind with strings and piano (and podorythmy!) is a tour de force of great beauty, which will be transposed on stage on Sunday at the church of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu.
Classic/Trad
The voices of the wind with strings and piano
The North Wind, The Trad Quartet and Philippe Prud’homme
The Northern Company