Instrumental music is enjoying its heyday in Quebec, popularized by artists who have accumulated millions of streams online and won prestigious awards here and abroad. How to explain the enthusiasm for this minimalist music once considered too abstract and not accessible to the general public? Overview.
“Did I expect people to react so massively to my album? Absolutely not. We were thinking of selling 2000 or 3000 of them, and we would have been happy. But we are at more than 140,000 [au Canada] “says Alexandra Stréliski, still stunned by the success ofInscapelaunched in 2018.
When the To have to met her a few months ago, the pianist and composer was working in her studio on her next album, Neo-Romance, which is slated for release on March 31. Absorbed in this creative stage of her work, she did not yet feel the stress that overwhelms her when releasing her works publicly. “There is always a certain excitement. Will it work as well, will the public still be on board? »
Its popularity, however, is no longer to be proven. The young woman has accumulated more than 300 million continuous plays around the world. In 2020, she received a Juno award for album of the year and won the Félix for female performer of the year, which is rather unprecedented for an artist who does not sing. In 2019, she also received three Félix: revelation, composer and instrumental album of the year.
“There has really been a craze for instrumental music in recent years in Quebec. It has always been present, but it has become a more popular phenomenon than ever,” notes Danick Trottier, professor and director of the Department of Music at UQAM.
Alongside Alexandra Stréliski, other artists such as Jean-Michel Blais, Martin Lizotte, Flore Laurentienne and Simon Leoza have managed to breathe new life into modern classical music by making it more accessible to the general public. Proof of this: they multiply successful albums, collect millions of listenings on streaming music platforms around the world and chain concerts. They are also several to win prestigious prizes and to be talked about in the media.
Danick Trottier explains this resurgence in popularity in part by the importance of “image music” in our lives. “We are more than ever surrounded by music that accompanies films, series, advertisements,” he says. People are now attracted as much by the visual as the sound. They remember the names of the composers and go buy their albums, listen to them online, see them in concert. »
Alexandra Stréliski recognizes this. His career took off when filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée used songs from his debut album in his film Dallas Buyers Club and performed his music during the 2014 Oscars.
” pianoscope, I launched it in 2010 on Bandcamp, in self-promotion. It was my mother who sent the CDs, and all of a sudden she started sending CDs to China, to Istanbul, and so on. Something was going on,” she recalls.
For his part, Jean-Michel Blais was already on a roll when filmmaker Xavier Dolan asked him to compose the soundtrack for his film. Matthias and Maxime in 2019. This collaboration was still a boost in his career and notably allowed him to win the Cannes Soundtrack Honor Prize.
The power of listening platforms
The one who was awarded the Félix for the best instrumental album of the year in 2022, however, believes that it is above all the platforms for listening to streaming music that have helped to popularize instrumental music. “When you’re a French-speaking singer-songwriter and you have 100,000 plays on Spotify, that’s a lot. But someone from the neoclassical, his piece ends up on tons of playlists, and you quickly reached 15 million streams without doing anything about it. It’s borderline unfair. »
Alexandra Stréliski shares her opinion. “People consume a lot of instrumental music in their daily lives through playlists to study, to work, to do yoga, for their car or bike rides. It plays for a lot, it makes us known all over the world, it boosts the statistics and it attracts record companies. »
A great future
Professor Danick Trottier believes the appeal of this classic revival will continue for years to come. A new record company, POPOP, devoted to instrumental music, was launched in November 2021. In addition, more and more performers are embarking on instrumental projects, such as Coeur de pirate, Daniel Bélanger or even Ingrid St-Pierre, quite recently.
“People realize the social role of instrumental music. It soothes them and it awakens a whole range of emotions that we had perhaps lost, ”underlines Alexandra Stréliski. Her fans often write to her, she says, to let her know that her music accompanies them when they are anxious or in difficult times in their lives. “When I think that at the beginning, I was afraid to go on stage, I was afraid of the emotional intensity that my life was going to be if I made that my job. […] Today, to receive these comments, to see 2000 people applauding me in concert, it’s magnificent. These are memories that will accompany me on my deathbed, ”she says.