Jean-Michel Blais Short-Listed for Polaris Music Prize + Announces More Tour Dates
By: Macon Prickett Jul. 19, 2018
This week, Jean-Michel Blais' acclaimed album, Dans ma main, was short-listed for the prestigious Polaris Music Prize. One of 10 finalists selected by a jury of Canadian music journalists, the winner will be announced at the gala on September 17. "So proud Dans ma main made the Polaris Music Prize short-list," says Blais. "Congrats and thanks to my team, fans, and of course the people who voted for it."
Out now via Arts & Crafts, Dans ma main is intimate and holistic, cerebral while also possessing a deep emotional immediacy. Exclaim! called the record "another intimate masterpiece," while The Globe And Mail notes that it "pulls and releases with a dancer's grace and a playwright's flair."
Today, Jean-Michel Blais also shares the new video for "roses" from director Jason Rodi. "Making 'roses' was unlike any other film for me," claims Rodi. "It was truly channeled from Jean-Michel's original inspiration for the song. A feminine essence that permeates every frame. Birth, rebirth, and the eternal circle of life."
Blais' performances have historically been sites of emotional outpouring, where a special bond between audience and performer is forged. Blais continues his world tour in the UK this week before heading home to Canada for a run of dates beginning in September. Full tour dates can be found below.
WATCH AND SHARE "DANS MA MAIN" HERE
PURCHASE / STREAM DANS MA MAIN HERE
JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS PERFORMANCE DATES
07/18 - London, UK - Vortex Jazz Club [Tickets]
07/20 - Manchester, UK - St. Michael's [Tickets]
09/06 - Québec, QC - Grand Théâtre [Tickets]
09/14 - Winnipeg, MB - West End Cultural Centre [Tickets]
09/19 - Drummondville, QC - Maison des arts de Drummondville [Tickets]
09/21 - Laval, QC - Salle André Mathieu [Tickets]
09/22 - Lavaltrie, QC - Eglise St-Antoine de Lavaltrie [Tickets]
10/03 - Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall [Tickets]
10/05 - Vancouver, BC - St.James Hall [Tickets]
10/06 - San Francisco - Swedish Music Hall [Tickets]
10/22 - Berlin, Germany - Silent Room [Tickets]
10/24 - Hamburg, Germany - Resonanzraum [Tickets]
10/27 - Paris, France - Cafe de la Danse
11/25 - New York, NY - National Sawdust [Tickets]
11/28 - Boston, MA - The Red Room [Tickets]
12/04 - Seattle, WA - Triple Door [Tickets]
12/05 - Portland, OR - The Old Church [Tickets]
12/07 - Los Angeles, CA - Lodge Room [Tickets]
03/23 - Knowlton, QC - Théâtre du Lac Brome [Tickets]
03/24 - Sainte-Marie, QC - Salle Méchatigan [Tickets]
The first single, "roses", is a binary journey, softly oscillating between despair and hope. Oblique turns meet familiar resolve, as warm chords reference Radiohead's "Pyramid Song", and Eric Carmen / Celine Dion's "All By Myself", in sharp counterpoint to Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 2 - an unexpected, but intentional cross-hatching of high-and low-art. Its emotional arc - optimistic and funereal - closes soundly with the glint of cinematic strings.
The pulsating and elastic "blind" captures the grace with which Blais traces this genre dance. "Built as a subtle transition from acoustic to electronic, the piece blends styles, deconstructs categories, pushes back boundaries alongside a spectrum reflecting our human potential to self-transcendence," Blaisdescribes. "Might we be blind at night, at least we aren't deaf."
Dans ma main explores an everyday life awash in spirituality, stemming from Blais' interplay with music as therapy. Compelled by the cathartic air that audiences exude in his pin-drop performances, Blais considers how music has served as a tool of wellness in his own life. From his prior career in special education, to the role classical and ambient music played soothing the Tourettic symptoms he experienced as a child, Jean-Michel's new compositions subconsciously call upon these periods of his life, reimagining a serenity he had only experienced seated at the piano.
Decidedly not limited to the keys as his compositional palette, Blais' music is imbued with an emotional depth that belies its wordlessness. His playing and composition are poetic in themselves, with an inspired understanding of the inherent lyricism in instrumental music.
Borrowing imagery from the words of singer-songwriter Safia Nolin on "igloo", Blais' interprets the lonely nights where, "wandering like an amnesic ghost," one can find oneself within its own shadowy reflections, a nostalgic incursion into a person's vintage recollections.
Yet perhaps in the album's most unexpected turn, on closer "chanson", Blais reveals his own hidden falsetto, trilling like adjacent keys in a nearly wordless lilt. Ironically, the only discernible meaning he sings: "I speak." Blais presents the human voice as another instrument, resting vague in its definition, so emphasizing the listener's active role in projecting and interpreting itself. As Blais says, "What one hears becomes more relevant and telling than what is said."
More than Blais' mastery of composition x improvisation, greater than his ability to touch and confront emotion - including the pain of even death ("roses" and "a heartbeat away") - is his ability to challenge listeners. The title track, "dans ma main", and by extension the album as a whole, is about Blais' conscious decision to pursue the unknowns of a musical path.
LISTEN AND SHARE "DANS MA MAIN" HERE
Growing up in rural Quebec, Blais began writing original compositions by age 11, and by 17 was invited to the Trois-Rivières Music Conservatory. However, the constraints of formal training drew Blais off this musical course, putting aside his piano until years later, settling in Montreal, he rediscovered his love.
The result, as Blais' body of work unfurls, is the creation of a new musical forum where freshly sounded notes bounce back instantly with the magic and wisdom of shared space. Dans ma main captures but one moment of this infinite lineage, but with it comes the reminder of all the energy we hold in our own hands, in this moment. As Blais says:
"Like pieces of an unclear puzzle, a melting mirror, hope lays right there, into our singular hands, with which we love, we fail, we pray, we steal, we give, we try, we pay, we pluck, we muff, we scratch, we touch, we play, we hold each other's hands."
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