 Media Credit: Marianne Larochelle Jorane: One name, five fingers and a cello.
|
|
Jazz-metal. Sitar-infused techno. Nowadays, every other musician claims more and more outlandish genre-fusing labels for themselves. Singer-songwriter Jorane (probably the only artist to fall under the genre of "rock-cello") refuses to categorize herself as such a novelty. Although she mostly writes folksy experimental rock with the traditionally classical cello as her main instrument, she has also played in jazz festivals and orchestras and is an accomplished film composer.
"You decide what my sound is," she challenges the listener. At 19, she switched from guitar to cello not for its unique rock sound, but because it "felt natural, inspiring, close to my personality. It was so easy to express myself through cello."
As an award-winning musician, Jorane has worked with many other artists, including Sarah McLachlan, Lisa Germano, John Mellencamp, Simple Minds, the Indigo Girls, Simon Wilcox, Three Days Grace, Projet Orange, Randy Bachman, Seal and Michael Brook.
Her eighth album, Vers à soi, was released in late October 2007. This is her first fully French album since her debut, but her body of work has been popular with audiences of many languages. The material found on Vers à soi is a culmination of the last two years, an emotional time which she believes the album channels. She went on an eye-opening trip to India, dealt with the deaths of very close family and friends, and gave birth to her first baby. Her album thus draws from these experiences of love, life and death: the timeworn trinity of art.
"As an artist," she explains, "our goal or role is not to find new subjects but to give new ways of seeing it. We create different tints… Love will always be there. We cannot reinvent the subject… but the challenge is to find another way to see it."
Vers à soi features Jorane's characteristically wispy, head register voice and her creative use of cello, which includes extensive percussive as well as lyrical use of the instrument. It is a markedly intimate record, even with lush orchestration. For her, working with other versatile musicians both on stage and in the studio is conducive to spontaneous creation. Instrumentation and style also vary greatly between songs. The result is a soundscape both unified and extraordinarily jazz-like in its seemingly improvisatory musical style.
As Jorane's frequent painting metaphors attest, visual art has always been an extra-musical passion for her. Watching her on stage is definitely a multimedia experience, with musicians switching instruments from song to song, creating purposeful "visual tableaux" that fittingly underscore the rich character of Jorane's music. "Plus," she explains, "we're not scared to just stomp around and have fun!"
Environmental preservation has been another of her passions. Forget Radiohead; Jorane's projects include a web album, Canvas or Canvass?-a name which juxtaposes art with politics-whose songs were released periodically online until the project was completed in mid-2007. All donations went to Live Earth, the Montreal 2007 version of which Jorane also performed at, improvising to visual images. She warns that "this may sound strange to some people" but she also loves mathematics. "It's not that far from music," she explains. Above all, she aims, as she puts it, to "communicate, be creative and constructive" in all her work.
Jorane's music is certainly communicative. She insists that the reason she sings for herself as well as listeners is to imbue experience-or reflection on experience-with more nuance, whether sweet or bittersweet. She speaks humbly about a previously bedridden young fan who finally attended her show, who claimed to be able to escape the bed through her music; about those who inform her they accompanied funerals and births with her music; about those, including herself, who wallow through her darker music in anger or sadness.
"It seems to give something important. Other people's music for me too, it's a home for the soul. Music's something so powerful, it's beyond yourself. I create for myself and others, but it always takes a life beyond its own."
Jorane plays at Le National (1220 Ste-Catherine E.) January 22-26, at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $12. from www.admission.com.
Be the first to comment on this story