La Couleur du Vent

“A beautiful fusion - impressionism and Quebec poetry. A contemporary approach.” —Francine Charette, Club-Culture

“Clearly a feat of adaptation and fusion (not to mention the arrangements, inspired by Gil Evans, as much as Satie and Debussy) as well as bringing to light hitherto unsung verses.” —Claude Côté, Voir

Description

For a long time I have wanted to sing original compositions in French, a sort of fusion of jazz and la chanson. To do this I looked for poems by Quebec writers. I spent a few years browsing through books, e-mails and faxes generously given to me by five poets. What came out was very impressionist, an era in art and music that has always fascinated me.

I seemed to choose poems that evoked images of light and shadow, of wind, water and snow: Love as a huricane, Death as dark waters to be crossed. Time as a long spirit running through the snow, planet Earth as a scarred and defeated warrior (but still a lovely ship!). I tried to give these images sound, but in a jazz idiom, surely inspired by Gil Evans.

I remembered what Carol Harris, director of the choir I sang in for ten years, used to call "word painting"…giving colour, form and emotion to the poetry we sang. But instead of using human voices, I surrounded my own voice, reciter of these poems, with wind instruments, each one bringing its own personality to the palette, embraced by a rhythm section.

What a treat for me! So what started as a fusion of jaz and la chanson became a quest to discover the colour of the wind.

Planète (Gilles Vigneault / Karen Young)
La couleur du vent (Gilles Vigneault / Karen Young)
Quelle amoureuse (Michel X. Côté / Karen Young)
Voici le vent (Francine Hamelin / Karen Young)
La tempête (Hélène Monette / Karen Young)
L'été (Gilles Vigneault / Karen Young)
Les oies (Gilles Vigneault / Karen Young)
Un passant (Gilles Vigneault / Karen Young)
Vers le couchant (Marie-Hélène Montpetit / Karen Young)
La paix de ce jardin (Francine Hamelin / Karen Young)

Composition and arrangement — Karen Young
Charts — Bill Mahar, Karen Young

MUSICIANS
Jennifer Bell — soprano sax, flute, clarinet
Jean Derome — flute, bass flute, alto sax
Kelsley Grant — trombone
Jim Hillman — drums
Norman Lachapelle — bass
Frank Lozano — soprano and tenor sax, bass clarinette, alto flute
Bill Mahar — trumpet, flugelhorn
Sylvain Provost — guitar
Jocelyn Veilleux — French horn

SOUND
Recorded at Studio Fast Forward and Studio URSH
Engineer — Barney Beninger, Jean Lacasse, Antoine Jobin
Mix — Barney Beninger, Karen Young, Jean Lacasse, Denis Cadieux
Mastering — Renée Marc-Aurèle, Studio SNB

COVER
Design — Susan Valyi
Live photography — Michel Pinault

Critics

La Couleur du Vent
Claude Côté, Voir
Karen Young is never ambiguous: her albums are radically different, from one to the other. Her neo-medieval Song of Songs of three years ago and her retrospective, home-made celebration of last year gave no idea of what was coming this year: an album sung entirely in French. That which could have been banal, even though sung by an Anglo, if it hadn't have had this angle: impressionistic jazz songs, written to poems of Vigneault, Hélène Monette, Francine Hamelin and Michel X. Côté. There is in this adventure plenty of work at adaptation and demystification (not to mention the arrangements which are inspired as much by Gil Evans as by Satie and Debussy) as well as bringing to light hitherto unsung verses. Audacious, this literary work, supported softy by the horn section, can be heard at the Spectrum February 28 [2003].