TORO Magazine curious about Montreal’s bilingual music industry: Excerpts from interview with M pour Montréal founder Sébastien Nasra

This article out of Toronto’s TORO Magazine has some interesting tidbits that underline a current trend towards an increasingly nuanced curiosity about Montreal ‘tel quel’… (Geoff)

Excerpts from TORO goes to Montreal (TORO Magazine, Nov. 16, 2011):

“This year TORO will be covering the sixth annual M for Montreal festival, an industry conference and music showcase series bridging the gap between Francophone indie rock and pop and Anglophone/international artists, including Active Child, M83, The Barr Brothers, and more.

That gap has narrowed in the past several years; Malajube and Cœur de pirate have achieved crossover success while retaining their native language, and Montreal has become known not only as a breeding ground for buzz bands, but a true Canadian centre for music culture and business.

Cool Music Notes – An Interview with Dave Cool!

1.       Can you tell me a little bit about yourself: what do you do? What motivated you to do what you do today?

Currently I’m the Director of Member Services for the Canadian Independent Recording Artists’ Association (CIRAA), as well as the Blogger-in-residence for Bandzoogle, a website builder for musicians. I’ve been involved with music since I can remember. When I was 5, my Dad needed a drummer for his rock n’ roll cover band, so he trained me like a monkey to play a few beats and I went from there, going on to play drums and bass in punk bands, to working in recording studios, running a record label and booking venues.

2.       Can you give me some insight on how the music world works? This would be for someone who has an outsider perspective (non-music person  or for someone from a different arts background  ex. visual arts, theatre, etc)  to better understand this artistic practice and perhaps demystify the idea of the artist who is immediately discovered, like an epiphany, and on their way to stardom? Or does it work like that?

Because of reality television and mainstream media, often the perception is that musicians and bands can become instant successes. But the reality is that many of the artists and bands who are successfully making a living took many years to get there. Even The Beatles spent years performing 8-hour sets, 7 days a week in Germany before breaking into the American market. It doesn’t happen overnight, and there are no shortcuts. It’s like any other profession; it takes years of practice to hone your craft as a songwriter, performer, and often times, a business person too.

3.       Can you tell me what emerging musicians  need to know in order to make it in the music business? Where do you start if you live in Quebec? What resources could they seek? What are some music-based organizations out there to help a musician?

French radio host asks Anglo filmmaker ‘La question qui tue’

Excerpt from French radio host fires loaded question at Jacob Tierney, by Brendan Kelly for The Gazette

Jacob Tierney's new movie, Good Neighbours, is based on Quebec writer Chrystine Brouillet's novel Chère voisine. Photograph by: Dave Sidaway, The Gazette

To steal a line from Tout le monde en parle, it was most definitely La question qui tue.

It came a few minutes into Jacob Tierney’s interview on top-rated radio morning show C’est bien meilleur le matin on La Première Chaine of Radio-Canada a few days back. The anglo Montreal filmmaker was there to talk about his new movie, Good Neighbours, a darkly comic Hitchockian murder mystery that opens Friday, and host René Homier-Roy asked Tierney why his N.D.G.-set movie – which stars Jay Baruchel, Scott Speedman and Emily Hampshire – didn’t better represent the cultural diversity of this west-end borough.

It was, to put it mildly, one heckuva a loaded question. You don’t need to be a film critic to understand why Homier-Roy was taking Tierney to task on this point. I’ve never heard a radio or TV host ever ask a Québécois filmmaker why his or her movie wasn’t representative enough of Montreal’s multicultural mosaic.

But Tierney faces this hot-button question – and probably always will in Montreal – because he is the guy who dared to say publicly last summer that francophone Québécois cinema has not done enough to represent anglos and other minority groups.

He’s absolutely right, and he’s not the first person to say this. But he was the first anglophone filmmaker to say it and that’s why he was roundly lambasted on radio call-in shows and in no small number of newspaper columns.

A couple of hours later the same morning, in a café just up the street from the Radio-Canada tower, Tierney talked about La question qui tue.

“That’s a very particular way of looking at diversity,” Tierney said.

“I think a movie where you have native actors, Jewish characters, Chinese people … look it’s a small movie and I’m not going to try to list off all the nationalities that exist in it. I don’t want to get into this stuff again, but I think it’s plenty diverse. To tell me that Good Neighbours is not diverse. I call a huge bullish– on that.”

Continue reading on www.montrealgazette.com/…/

Montreal’s Jessica Paré works her French-Canuck connection on ‘Mad Men’

Jessica Paré, Globe and Mail

By GAYLE MACDONALD for Globe and Mail, Published Monday, Apr. 04, 2011

The first time Mad Men creator Matt Weiner laid eyes on Montreal-born actress Jessica Paré, who had a teeny part at the start of season four, he was bowled over by the exotic image she presented in a pencil-thin red suit, and declared: “You look like a French movie star.”

The Quebec native tells this story with an embarrassed laugh, adding that the praise was appreciated, but somewhat effusive, given she had all of one line of dialogue. “I knew I had the French part down,” says a smiling Paré, who shares some of the late Elizabeth Taylor’s dark, luminous beauty. “But to be called a movie star? Well, all I could say was thank you.”

VIDEO: Click image to watch CP Video interview with Jessica Paré.

But there was something about the actress’s Canadian-ness – the fact that she spoke French and hailed from a distinct culture – that captivated Weiner, who as season four progressed, gave Paré meatier scenes as the dashing Don Draper’s secretary Megan, and eventually, his paramour.

“I think it tickled his fancy that I had a different heritage,” says the bilingual Paré, whose film credits include titles such as Denys Arcand’s Stardom and her friend Jacob Tierney’s The Trotsky. “Matt does take stuff from his actors’ lives. So he kept my experience growing up in Quebec and incorporated it into the script. So Megan comes from Montreal. She speaks French to her mom on the phone. And, who knows, maybe she’ll introduce Sterling Cooper to poutine,” she says with a laugh. (Mad Men celebrates her Canuck status in the same way the Vancouver-born character Robin talks Tim Hortons, frequents The Hoser Hut pub, and wears Vancouver Canuck goalie Roberto Luongo’s jersey in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother.)

Continue reading on www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/…/

(Audio) Simon Brault on Upstage (CKUT, March 10)

Click here to listen to Upstage Interview with Simon Brault, President of Culture Montréal/CEO of National Theatre School

 

CBC inspired movie The Year Dolly Parton was My Mom

Julia Stone plays Elizabeth Gray in the film The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom, directed by Tara Johns. The film is being shown as part of the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. Photograph by: Brigitte Chabot Communications

By Brendan Kelly, for the Gazette

Montreal filmmaker Tara Johns is an unabashed CBC Radio addict and her obsession with our national public radio service is actually partly responsible for Johns’s totally endearing first feature, The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom. The film, which has its premiere Saturday night as the closing-night selection at the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, is not a biopic of the Queen of Country Music, but it is indeed inspired by the woman who topped the charts with songs like Jolene and 9 to 5.

(…) “I was trying to find an idea for a short film and I heard a (CBC Radio) interview with Dolly Parton. I’d never listened to her without seeing her and so I came at her with a totally different perspective. I really heard her for the first time and I thought, ‘She’s such a strong woman.’ Here’s this woman who came out of Tennessee, and she was this kind of pin-up-looking girl, and she planted her feet, and set her limits.

“She built a dynasty. She was so smart and so engaging. She was a feminist before the word had even been invented. I wished that when I was 11 or 12, I had known that Dolly Parton was such an outspoken woman and role model. She looks so fake on the outside but she’s so real on the inside.”

The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom, which Johns wrote and directed, is about an 11-year girl in 1976 Winnipeg who, unlike the 11-year-old Johns, does see Parton as a role model. Elizabeth – played with remarkable assurance by newcomer Julia Stone – feels her whole world is literally crumbling in front of her eyes when she learns one day that she’s adopted. Her buttoned-down mom, played by Macha Grenon, isn’t particularly well-equipped to deal with her daughter’s questions – and her adolescent rage. That’s when Elizabeth comes to the conclusion that Ms. Parton might well be her biological mom. Cue classic musical road-trip movie, with a confused girl on an oh-so-old-school banana-seat bicycle on her way to Minneapolis to see her idol in concert.

Continue reading on www.montrealgazette.com/…

CharPo: Ford’s Focus: Nick Carpenter

From A Nomadic Journey

“What is underneath the sound. Was there metaphor in music, why does it affect emotionally?” by Barbara Ford

I love this work!  First, I flip through the QDF calendar, scanning for an upcoming production sporting someone I have yet to meet or work with in the local theatre scene or am just curious about.  Then out of the blue, I call them or send them an e-mail asking for an interview and the next thing you know, we’re on the phone, in their home or a nearby café, and for an hour or so, they graciously share the ups and downs of their professional, and sometimes, personal lives.

Playwright, musician, performer and composer Nick Carpenter was my choice this week and am I glad I picked him.  I first ran into him when I mistook him for someone else from the back playing the Theatre Ste-Catherine piano at the MECCAs one year.  Once I realized my faux-pas I sheepishly retreated to a convenient corner while he very professionally continued playing.  Until then, though I had seen his name attached to several projects, my only other encounter was through one of his short stories in an anthology published through CBC in the late 90s. Chatting with him by phone this week I discovered a warm, introspective and candid artist. (…)

Continue reading on charpo.blogspot.com/…

Q ‘n A with CKUT’s Underground Sounds

What are the biggest influences on the content and the form of your weekly playlist?
CD: New releases that’ve come out that week, who’re playing shows that week, the songs I’m listening to that week, my mood and the weather that week, stuff I find on blogs that week, serious myspace creeping that week.
NS: For content, there are a lot of factors but the underlying motive is that I want to play music sets with some common thread. For the format, I look up to Grant Laurence’s podcast on CBC radio 3 for its energy, and to the interview style/editing of This American Life.

Read more at: Midnightpoutine.ca

Prita Chhabra: “Montreal is where I really started believing in my dream.”

That dream started small enough, Chhabra recalls with a laugh. “I would do karaoke nights once a week at Clyde’s in the West Island.

Read More At: MontrealMirror.com

Andrew Cuk

“Cuk manifested his desire to have his own company with Canis Tempus in 2005, announcing its birth with Juliet and Romeo, a two-hander Fringe gender-bender, with Cuk as Juliet and Mercutio among others, and garnering the Montreal Gazette’s stamp of approval when it called the production “exceptionally beautiful and exciting”.”

~ A Classic Innovator

by Barbara Ford

Read more at: Charpo.blogspot.com