Le Vent Du Nord is a French speaking Canadian folk group from Quebec and was first formed in 2002. They are currently on tour exploring the idea of territory and borders as reflected in their new album Territoires.
Described as a progressive folk band this group is predominantly traditional in its approach to style with only a slight embrace of less traditional elements. They performed a dozen or so pieces and each of the five musicians on stage introduced and led different songs and interacted informally with the audience creating an engaging show making this a band that is definitely the sum of its parts. Nicolas Boulerice opened singing and playing piano accompanied by the rest of the band and it was a great start to a fantastic night. There was no programme for the evening so I am a bit in the dark as to the names of the songs, but they were well introduced with background stories added, not without humour – one of the songs was the sad story about a woman who was hanged, presumably in a past century, but were informed that as we probably didn’t understand French, we could pretend it was a happy song in the end to save sorrow! The humour was well received but I did wish I understood the lyrics a bit better as part of the beauty of folk music is experiencing a range of emotions including sad songs.
A range of emotions was indeed expressed, with some impressively paced dance pieces, a capella ballads and lively songs. One element that could be described as progressive was how they structured their songs. It is typical in the celtic tradition to repeat sections many times, particularly in a dance, before moving on to another section or indeed merging in to another tune. If you are not dancing to the music, it can be quite repetitive. Le Vent du Nord crafted extended sections adding a much more improvisatory element to the music making repeats have variation and allowing each set of tunes to progress with drive to a clear climatic moment. Airs were stitched together with craftsmanship making very interesting set pieces.
The musicianship was top notch and simply could not be faulted or improved – Boulerice also played the Hurdy Gurdy which added a fantastic quality to the music, sometimes a drone, sometimes adding colour to the melody but never overpowering. All of the musicians played a variety of instruments which was very impressive – Andre Brunet played the fiddle, foot-tapping and also sung. At the same time! It was quite astounding to see Andre play the fiddle sat down then add a constant, steady rhythm through tapping his feet. This really was like tap dancing in a seated position and added a strong percussive element that lasted some time whilst simultaneously playing fast melodies on the fiddle and singing harmony! Likewise, his brother Rejean played bass guitar, accordion, jaw harp, piano and added some foot tapping while also singing. Olivier Demers played fiddle with foot tapping and vocals and finally Simon Beaudry sang and played guitar and bouzouki. The combination of instruments created great variety and ingenuity which kept the audience thoroughly entertained. One of the songs –again forgive me for the lack of name – was sung entirely a capella and explored quartal and quintal harmonies similar to organum music. This was really stunning and showed off the skills of this band who could easily shine as a vocal group alone. The voices blended really well and worked fantastically together. Managing all of these different instruments seemed effortless to the group who were sometimes standing sometimes sitting or walking, changing instruments on stage mid song, moving microphones and so on. The physicality of the performance was also engaging.
Le Vent du Nord performed a stellar concert in the Stoller Hall, with its fantastic acoustic. The audience were warm and there was plenty of foot stamping and yells and cheers from the seats as the night went on.
Reviewer - Aaron Loughrey
on - 7/4/19
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