Hush! Absolute pitch. Yes. Know that Martine St-Clair has perfect pitch. Both ears, even! Handy for a singer, right? It depends on how you hear it. Don’t say it too loud, it’s intimidating. For what ? Ask Catherine Major!
Explanation from Martine, seated opposite the Outremont: “At a very young age, I found myself in recording studios, and instantly I was well. Physically well. Happy in my ears. It gave me self-confidence, I saw everything. So I was commenting. Is there a guitar somewhere making a weird noise? I heard the slightest dissonance: for me, it was just normal. But around, it created unease. The sound engineers, the musicians looked at me strangely… What’s wrong with him, as a child, to teach us a lesson? »
If she quickly understood – once the phenomenon was identified – to keep a little embarrassment, she had nevertheless found her good place in the universe. Bathing in sounds, feasting on voices in harmony. Not so surprising that Luc Plamondon and Michel Berger chose her to be in 1980, at the height of her 18 years, the Quebec Crystal of rock opera starmania, role created by France Gall in the original version. “Absolute pitch, it served me and it pushed me. Wanting to understand what interpretation is. I couldn’t sing next to the note, well, okay. But this accuracy is not a tessitura, is not for all that the expression of my soul. My idol was Fabienne Thibeault. She had everything: the purity of the notes, but also the emotion, a way of her own. Me, I had my beautiful instrument, but not the rest. It became the quest of a lifetime. »
I have been among the guests often [aux Francos]but headlining, it’s for my 60th birthday that it’s going to happen
Being Martine, on edge
Even today, she works on her voice, her breathing. Even though people sing louder than her in the tour shows reunion the choruses of his irrepressible ballads from the 1980s — try: We are going to love each other, Love is in the air, Tonight love is in your eyes, it comes out on its own! —, Martine St-Clair still wants to better understand “how the best singers sing”.
In the show that she will present on June 16 on one of the large outdoor stages of the Francos, she is measured in particular by The Way We Were. From Barbra Streisand to be even more Martine St-Clair. “To be Martine in short, in fact. Being by singing who I am when I paint. When I manage to abandon myself in the gesture. »
Worlds and modes of expression
For more than two decades, it is the mode of expression that satisfies her the most: she regularly exhibits her paintings, has assiduous amateurs, lives off the song. “One day, someone asked me if I sang while I painted. I didn’t realize it, but yes, it’s like breathing, the gesture and the note seem to influence each other. It was a revelation for me: what if it could be done on stage? I will not go too far ahead on the result, but there is a project in progress… ”
As long as we look at the stages of his career, we see that it took him a long time to express himself to his liking. Dare to propose his texts? Why do it, when you have a Plamondon, a Claude-Michel Schönberg, a Marc Lavoine who provide rhyme at will? It’s the luck and the trap of popular singers, ask Diane Dufresne!
Had to give up others first Wash, wash!, extricate itself from the tubes to enter its own auditory canal and go to the heart. In 2004, she wrote the entire album All I have. Success of esteem and great satisfaction. “It was in a way Martine’s first album, after Martine St-Clair’s records. »
Finally the Francos!
A cover album, Martine makes her cinemafollowed: so many challenges for the singer and her refined instrument, rubbing shoulders with the Shirley Bassey of Diamonds Are Forever as much as the Jevetta Steele of calling youup to the dizzying Edda Dell’Orso on the theme ofOnce upon a time in west. “I didn’t think I would get there. I tried. Go ahead, little one! It didn’t matter if I failed. I think you always have to go a little beyond your register, sometimes we would have underestimated our possibilities. It lives, a voice. It evolves, or not, depending on what we do with it.
This will be the first time she presents a show at the Francos. “I was among the guests often, but at the head of the bill, it’s for my 60th birthday that it’s going to happen. “A crowd of all ages, outside, it will only be happiness. Anyone who has seen Julie Masse take the stage at Corey Hart’s show on the Plains at the FEQ will testify to this: there are popular singers in the noblest sense of the word, deeply loved, who we find with their beautiful repertoire like so many friends. “I think even outside, we will feel close. It’s such a privilege to feel these songs alive in the present. And everyone is going to sing well, that’s absolutely certain. Joy is always like this: perfectly just and justified.