JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS ANNOUNCES ‘EVICTION SESSIONS’ EP, AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 30
5 NEW LIVE PIANO RECORDINGS WITH ACCOMPANYING MINI-DOCUMENTARY
UPCOMING DATES IN TORONTO, NEW BRUNSWICK, HALIFAX AND MORE
FOLLOW UP TO 2018 POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE SHORTLISTED ‘DANS MA MAIN’
LISTEN TO “SANS TITRE (ANDANTE)”
Today, contemporary pianist Jean-Michel Blais announced a new EP recorded live in his Montreal apartment before being evicted.
“In the spring of 2018, I was asked to leave the beloved apartment where lived for 7 years, and where I recorded my first album, Il,” explains Blais. “Before signing with Arts & Crafts, I would host one show a year in the intimacy of my bedroom. eviction sessions is a recording of my final pop-up concert in that apartment, and my way to say goodbye to that room, “he continues. “Friends and family, side by side on the floor, on my bed, sharing the silence of their breathing, I wanted to record a live album in a unique way that would capture the presence of them being.”
The result is eviction sessions, a five-song EP recorded live to accompany Blais’ recent full length, Dans ma main. The EP features new piano-only recordings the vocal and electronic-heavy album tracks, “blind”, “igloo” and “chanson”, as well as two new songs, “sans titre (andante)” and “hutchinson (improvisation)”.
On the contemplative minimalist composition “sans titre (andante)”, Blais says, “'andante' (an italian word for 'moving') is a tottering quest towards meaning, reflecting the process of seeking for another home.”
“hutchison (improvisation)”, a prepared piano excursion “where the almost-wrapped instrument features surrounding cardboard boxes, scotch tape, and a bag of pennies” harkens back to Blais’ “hasselblad” improvisations from his breakout album Il. eviction sessions is available on digital and streaming on November 30th.
WATCH A LIVE PERFORMANCE OF “SANS TITRE (ANDANTE)”
Blais will support Dans ma main and the new EP with an extensive world tour including forthcoming dates in America, Canada, UK, France, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands before embarking on an extensive tour of Quebec. Full details below.
MORE ABOUT DANS MA MAIN
Dans ma main, the sophomore release by pianist and composer Jean-Michel Blais, is an expansive album of post-classical piano with strands of electronic detail. Blending his conservatory skill and precise pop sensibility with synthetic accompaniment, Blais creates unique environments where the piano’s intimacy can be subtly disrupted at any time.
Largely composed in one week of open exploration, Blais comes closer to the improvisational source of his writing, painting impressionistic stories within the fluid, indefinite outlines of dreams. Dans ma main rolls like clouds of nostalgic fog blown away on a clear wind, at once recalling and signifying the end of Il, his critically acclaimed 2016 debut album.
By contrast, Il was written and recorded by Blais over two years, culled from rolls of accumulated experimentation into an enchanting, unignorable arrival. Il unearthed an unknown musical imagination, with overwhelmingly intimate compositions cloaked in the romantic din of Montreal city noise. The debut album would go on to amass 50 million streams worldwide, reaching #1 on Canadian Classical Albums chart, and transforming audiences globally.
On Dans ma main, tempted by a tangent first explored on Cascades, his 2017 collaborative EP with Grammy-nominated electronic producer CFCF – born from a featured performance at 2016’s Red Bull Music Academy – Blais steps out with an artistic statement that both reaffirms and refutes his post-classical stature. The disparate universes within Dans ma main are so seamlessly entwined that they appear borderless.
Dans ma main weaves together expressive piano with austere synths in a double-helix of acoustic and electronic arpeggiation, tethering techno, industrial, ambient, and new age music to Blais’ solo piano essence.
The first single, “roses”, is a binary journey, softly oscillating between despair and hope. Oblique turns meet familiar resolve, as warm chords reference Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song”, and Eric Carmen / Celine Dion’s “All By Myself”, in sharp counterpoint to Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 2 – an unexpected, but intentional cross-hatching of high-and low-art. Its emotional arc – optimistic and funereal – closes soundly with the glint of cinematic strings.
LISTEN AND SHARE “ROSES” HERE
The pulsating and elastic “blind” captures the grace with which Blais traces this genre dance. “Built as a subtle transition from acoustic to electronic, the piece blends styles, deconstructs categories, pushes back boundaries alongside a spectrum reflecting our human potential to self-transcendence,” Blais describes. “Might we be blind at night, at least we aren’t deaf.”
LISTEN AND SHARE “BLIND” HERE
Dans ma main explores an everyday life awash in spirituality, stemming from Blais’ interplay with music as therapy. Compelled by the cathartic air that audiences exude in his pin-drop performances, Blais considers how music has served as a tool of wellness in his own life. From his prior career in special education, to the role classical and ambient music played soothing the Tourettic symptoms he experienced as a child, Jean-Michel’s new compositions subconsciously call upon these periods of his life, reimagining a serenity he had only experienced seated at the piano.
Decidedly not limited to the keys as his compositional palette, Blais’ music is imbued with an emotional depth that belies its wordlessness. His playing and composition are poetic in themselves, with an inspired understanding of the inherent lyricism in instrumental music.
Borrowing imagery from the words of singer-songwriter Safia Nolin on “igloo”, Blais’ interprets the lonely nights where, “wandering like an amnesic ghost,” one can find oneself within its own shadowy reflections, a nostalgic incursion into a person’s vintage recollections.
LISTEN AND SHARE “IGLOO” HERE
Yet perhaps in the album’s most unexpected turn, on closer “chanson”, Blais reveals his own hidden falsetto, trilling like adjacent keys in a nearly wordless lilt. Ironically, the only discernible meaning he sings: “I speak.” Blais presents the human voice as another instrument, resting vague in its definition, so emphasizing the listener’s active role in projecting and interpreting itself. As Blais says, “What one hears becomes more relevant and telling than what is said.”
More than Blais’ mastery of composition x improvisation, greater than his ability to touch and confront emotion – including the pain of even death (“roses” and “a heartbeat away”) – is his ability to challenge listeners. The title track, “dans ma main”, and by extension the album as a whole, is about Blais’ conscious decision to pursue the unknowns of a musical path.
LISTEN AND SHARE “DANS MA MAIN” HERE
Growing up in rural Quebec, Blais began writing original compositions by age 11, and by 17 was invited to the Trois-Rivières Music Conservatory. However, the constraints of formal training drew Blais off this musical course, putting aside his piano until years later, settling in Montreal, he rediscovered his love.
The result, as Blais’ body of work unfurls, is the creation of a new musical forum where freshly sounded notes bounce back instantly with the magic and wisdom of shared space. Dans ma main captures but one moment of this infinite lineage, but with it comes the reminder of all the energy we hold in our own hands, in this moment. As Blais says:
“Like pieces of an unclear puzzle, a melting mirror, hope lays right there, into our singular hands, with which we love, we fail, we pray, we steal, we give, we try, we pay, we pluck, we muff, we scratch, we touch, we play, we hold each other’s hands.”
TRACKLIST
1) blind (acoustique)
2) igloo (acoustique)
3) sans titre (andante)
4) hutchison (improvisation)
5) chanson (instrumental)
LIVE DATES
11/25: New York, NY - National Sawdust
11/28: Boston, MA - The Red Room
12/04: Seattle, WA - Triple Door
12/05: Portland, OR - The Old Church
12/07: Los Angeles, CA - Lodge Room
12/13: Verdun, ON - Quai 5160 - Maison de la culture de Verdun -
01/19: Toronto, ON - The Royal Cinema
02/19: Quebec City, QC - Grand Théâtr
02/23: Copenhagen, DNK - Musikcaféen
02/25: Bochum, DE - Jahrhunderthalle
02/27: Mainz, DE - KUF
02/28: Esslingen, DE - Dieselstraße
03/01: Munich, DE - Heppel & Ettlich
03/02: London, UK - Purcell Room Southbank Centre
03/03: Amsterdam, NL - Zonnehuis
03/06: Bernay, FR - Pole Theatre
03/23: Knowlton, QC - Théâtre du Lac Brome
03/24: Sainte-Marie, QC - Salle Méchatigan
03/29: Lasalle, QC - Centre culturel Henri-Lemieux
03/30: Rimouski, QC - Salle Desjardins-Telus
04/02: Sept-îles, QC - Salle Jean-Marc Dion
04/04: Carleton-sur-Mer, QC - Studio Hydro Qc du quai des arts
04/05: Moncton, NB - Central United Church
04/06: Halifax, NS - St.Matthews United Church
04/11: Sainte-Thérèse, QC - Cabaret BMO
04/13: Granby, QC - St-George Church
04/26: Saint-Eustache QC - Le centre d’art La Petite Église
05/02: Montreal, QC - Monument National
05/03: Baie-du-Febvre, QC - Théâtre Belcourt
10/05: Saint-Jerome, QC - Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault
10/11: Sherbrooke, QC - Theatre Granada