Festival Mémoire et Racines: Day 2 in words and ...
Starting off the daytime workshop stages on Saturday was the duo of Sébastien Dubé and Michel Bordeleau. Born in Québec and now living in Sweden, Sébastien is a world renowned player of five-string acoustic bass. He and Michel are the ...
Dispatches from Festival Mémoire et Racines – Day One (Friday)
Friday night at Mémoire et Racines opened with a bang. The 25th anniversary festival is under way with the best weather you could order. We arrived at the mainstage in time for Rosier, the newly re-christened five-piece band that was ...
Festival Mémoire et Racines celebrates 25 years at this weekend’s ...
This weekend, the 25th anniversary Festival Mémoire et Racines will take flight in Joliette, QC a mere 50-minute drive from downtown Montréal. This is, bar none, my favourite Canadian folk festival. It’s worth your attention and definitely worth the drive ...
Sultans of String are crowdfunding this very important project
If you’ve been at all perturbed by the demonization of immigrants, migrants and refugees that has been going on recently in many western nations, you’re not alone. Chris McKhool and the Sultans of String believe in using their art to ...
Sabin Jacques & Rachel Aucoin – Grandes Rencontres
Once in a while something unique and memorable comes your way. This superb CD is one of those things. Rachel Aucoin and Sabin Jacques from Québec are partners musically and in life. Rachel is a highly accomplished classical pianist from ...
Mélisande [Electrotrad] – Les Millésimes
Elizabeth Szekeres has been working her way through all of the albums she picked up at this year’s Folk Alliance International conference and introducing us to some of her favourite discoveries – some new; some old. This album was released ...
Arise & Go – Meeting Place
This lovely CD is yet another example of the cross-border pollination that happens among the fantastically good musicians from Canada and the United States. That arbitrary political line we call a border does not exist when musicians get together. Fiddler ...
Sophie and Fiachra and André Marchand – Portraits
Since the days of the Irish potato famine that began over 150 years ago and the resulting mass migration of people to North America, Québec has benefited in a myriad of ways. Irish musicians pollinated Québec folklore with their tunes, ...
Elizabeth Szekeres breaks down this year’s Festival Mémoire et Racines ...
Festival Mémoire et Racines was founded in 1995, a one-tent-by-the-river affair in the town of Saint-Charles-Borromée, which is situated in the greater Joliette area northeast of Montréal. This is the Lanaudière region, perhaps the epicenter of the Québec folk music ...
Le Vent du Nord – Territoires
We are pretty sure there are lots of you out there who have been waiting with bated breath for this new recording from Le Vent du Nord, the preeminent progressive folk band out of Québec. Let this be your ...