Barely a year after its release in Quebec, Robert Charlebois’ new album, Tout est bien, is available in France at last. Coming a decade after the spare Doux Sauvage, the collection brings us twelve new symphonically orchestrated songs that already sound like classics. RFI Musique met up with the Canadian singer.
When times are hard, it’s tempting to plunge back into the past: Ludovic Bource and Air have been composing for silent films, Patricia Kass has done a cover of Piaf, the sixties are all the rage in Quebec, while Juliette Gréco celebrates another birthday.
To celebrate two decades since he released his first album, La Fossette, Dominique A is pulling out the stoppers. Along with remastered editions of his eight albums and a new album due out in March, he’ll be re-creating his seminal minimalist pop opus on stage, in partnership with Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville. One of France’s most unusual singers shares his thoughts on past and present.
Juliette Gréco’s new album, Ça se traverse et c’est beau, celebrates the bridges of Paris in the company of a stunning guest list including Marc Lavoine, Melody Gardot, Philippe Sollers and Amélie Nothomb. The result is a profound and striking concept-album.
What with representing France at the Eurovision Song Contest next May and the release of her fifth album, Échos, Anggun’s French comeback is turning out to be something of an event. With her trademark charm, the singer of Indonesian origin discussed her selection for Eurovision 2012 with us, as well as her “disloyal” relationship with the French and their language, and the Asian reserve that underlies her latest, more personal, opus.
After the release of Infréquentable in 2008, Bénabar put a hold on his usual writing-singing-composing career to focus on film then theatre. Now he has returned to music with Les Bénéfices du doute, a disconcerting sixth album that has dropped the familiar brass to leave way for the banjo and the harmonica.
Decked out with a scintillating garland of artists (like Mika, Carla Bruni, Renan Luce and Iggy Pop) and a 50-man orchestra, legendary French composer Michel Legrand has released a finely crafted Xmas album to light up the season: Noël ! Noël !! Noël !!!
Souchon, Hallyday, Bruel and Lama, plus younger stars like Renan Luce and Olivia Ruiz have reworked fourteen songs by Gilbert Bécaud, collected on the album Et maintenant. A triumph.
It looked like the tenth anniversary of the death of Gilbert Bécaud, best known for Nathalie and Et maintenant, was about to go unnoticed on 18 December 2001. Fortunately, a boxed set and a tribute album have been released to revive his memory.
It’s something he’d wanted to do for a while, and now Alain Souchon has fulfilled a dream in bringing out a new CD to help children suffering from cancer. He chose to interpret the songs that marked his own childhood: tunes that have stayed in his mind, that he sang to his own son and still hums under the shower. For the title, he chose A cause d’elles, since it’s because of these songs that Alain Souchon has become what he is.
There are times when you need a helping hand to reach a new milestone. To put together his fourth album, Nimissa, Guinean singer and musician Ba Cissoko was assisted by reputed producer Philippe Eidel, who has managed to draw out each song’s potential and assure some ship-shape production.
