Les vendredis de la chanson francophone – Les gentils garçons
National Arts Centre, Fourth Stage
Friday, April 29, 2005
at 8:00PM
This multi-talented song circle - comprised of a collection of Alberta francophone singers, songwriters, and dramatists - is certain to entertain and delight.
Guillaume Bois
Since arriving in Edmonton some seven years ago, Guillaume Bois has thrown himself into the Alberta cultural scene, as a stage actor, lyricist-composer-performer and host of the youth program ONYVA on Radio-Canada television. An award winner at the 2000 Gala Albertain de la Chanson, he was its artistic director in 2004 and 2005. This year Guillaume is the coordinator and artistic director of the interprovincial song competition Chant’Ouest. In 2004 he became the front man for the group Les Fistons. For several years he has been a writer-performer with the Alberta comedy revue R.I.R.E.. Guillaume is also involved in production and was the man behind Richard Desjardins’s visit to Alberta last fall.
Joël 'Eric' Lavoie
Originally from Saint-Isidore, a tiny community of 300 people located 500 km north of Edmonton, Joël was the youngest member and musical director of the group Lé Twés (1996-2004). Currently he is member of a number of Edmonton-area groups, including Les Fistons. Joël, a 2004 award winner at the Gala Albertain de la Chanson, teaches writing and song production at the Centre de développement musical. One of our best guitarists, he is preparing to record his first CD, while the nine songs on his excellent 2003 demo Et un jour have gotten a lot of air play. Joël can also be heard on Les Twés’s recording Les pieds dans’ bouette (1999). In the fall of 2004, he released an audio recording, produced at Radio-Canada.
Pierre Sabourin
A native of Edmonton and an award winner at the Gala Albertain and Chant’Ouest in 1995, Pierre Sabourin is one of our best tunesmiths. Many of the songs on Lumière du jour, the CD he released in 2000, are well-known to local radio listeners and some have been covered by emerging talent or on CD (Ronald Tremblay’s Suzanne). Pierre lives in Ottawa where he is a project officer for the Fédération des Jeunes Canadiens-Français. During the March 2005 Rendez-Vous de la Francophonie, he toured Canada with the Franco-Saskatchewanian group Polly-Esther and singer Ima. A second CD of original songs will be released later this year.
Robert 'Hudson' Walsh
Since arriving in Alberta during the 1990s, Robert Hudson Walsh has made an important place for himself in the local French-language musical scene. He has been arranger/musician/musical director for most of our performers, producing CDs for many of them, including Pierre Sabourin, Marie-Josée Ouimet and Ronald Tremblay. He was invited to produce the first collective recording of Alberta’s francophone artists, Trait d’Union (2003), and has also worked with many of Alberta and Saskatchewan’s English-speaking performers. Since 1999, he has been musical director of the Gala Albertain de la Chanson. He is a valued educator in western Canada and a song-writing specialist. In the ’90s, Robert Walsh recorded two CDs in English and is working on a first CD of his songs in French.
Ronald Tremblay
Radio host throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Radio-Canada producer in Alberta from 1985 to 2000, teacher of song writing and cultural commentator for many years on the air and in the local press, Ronald Tremblay returns periodically to his singing roots, many years after doing the rounds of Acadian clubs in the late ’70s. His CD Poésie pour le poivre (2002) brought 25 years of song writing and of influencing other writers full circle. Founder of the Gala Albertain and co-founder of Chant’Ouest, he has been the president of the Regroupement artistique francophone de l’Alberta since 2003. After a brief venture into the theatre, Ronald is currently working on a first collection of short fiction and planning more frequent stage appearances for 2005-06.
