Catherine Lara, a magical evening
Catherine Lara lit up the Maison symphonique with a thousand lights on Saturday evening for an intimate and enveloping concert, as part of her short Quebec tour.
The French singer began her reunion with the Montreal public to the tune of the magnificent song, “The skinned knees”, before continuing with her success “Johan”, which plunges back into her childhood. The song is indeed about a childhood friend she had lost sight of and found by chance in a restaurant.
“It’s been too long since I came to sing in Montreal,” she said with a big smile. You give me immense pleasure to have come out of your family cocoon to come and see me.
Emeritus violinist, Catherine Lara has also performed several instrumental pieces, including “Aral”, taken from her album of the same name, or pieces from her album “Bô, le voyage musical”, dating from 2018.
During the evening, she alternated between her usual violin and her baritone “bass violin”, which she imagined and which was made to measure for her.
Looking over her career, she then stopped on “Le dos au mur”, which she originally performed with actress Mathilde Seigner, before winking at Léo Ferré, of whom she is a great admirer, with an original version of his classic “Avec le temps”.
From the top of her 77 years, the singer still has the same grain of voice that moves and this passionate energy that has always characterized her. She also knows how to be tender and deep, like when she sings “La craie dans l’encrier”.
She wanted to pay tribute to Diane Dufresne, who made her want to sing differently when she discovered her the first time she came to Quebec, and to Luc Plamondon, who wrote her beautiful songs, including ” In the middle of nowhere”, which takes on a different meaning in the piano-voice version.
On stage, the singer, who has a career spanning more than 50 years, can rely on two excellent accomplices, multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Gautier and pianist Cyrille Lehn, who signs all the arrangements for the show.
At the end of the evening, Catherine Lara performed two of her great hits, “Magic Night” and “The Romantics”, in more intimate versions, stripped of their thunderous 1980s arrangements. The encore allowed her to bring back to light “You don’t have time”, one of his first successes which dates from 1972 and which has not aged a bit.
Catherine Lara ends her tour of the province on October 30, at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec.
