sérénades Jean-Michel Blais

• 1117 (piano)02:14
• 2amour (piano)05:10
• 3la chute (piano)03:07
• 4good morning (piano)01:18
• 5flaneur (piano)01:53
• 6yanni (piano)04:44
• 7ouessant (piano)04:32
• 8murmures (piano)03:18
• Total Runtime26:16

Info for sérénades

Montreal-based post-classical pianist and composer Jean-Michel Blais is thrilled to announce the upcoming release of his new EP sérénades. Out March 10 on Arts & Crafts, the EP is the solo piano companion to Blais' highly-successful 2022 album aubades, which was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize.

Featuring intimate and atmospheric solo piano versions of key tracks from the album, “amour” and ”ouessant”, as well as three new compositions, sérénades is the nocturnal, stripped-back counterpart to the orchestral brightness of aubades. The EP has a powerful connection to the world of sleep and dreams, as Blais describes in his signature dry humour:

“This EP is the length of the recommended nap: 25 to 30 minutes. To be honest, I've never been able to listen to this EP without drifting into sleep. I normally try and make my music play with your attention by constantly introducing new elements. But with this EP I was thinking about music of the night. It’s not meant to distract you and keep you alert. Please fall asleep to it.”

One of these new tracks, ‘la chute’ (‘The Fall’), continues a rich tradition of composers writing music specifically for the left hand, including works by composers such as Scriabin, Ravel, Bach and Chopin. ‘la chute’ was composed after Blais injured his right arm in a fall, leading him to channel his frustration into the piece.

“There was a moment there where I thought it was just finished for me as a pianist. It was quite a dark place which is why the song is not that happy. In the emergency room, they gave me morphine and ketamine, putting me in a state where I was completely disconnected from reality. My boyfriend had this denim coat with a woollen collar, and for some reason, I started dreaming about sheep in the alps, a shepherd, and the sheep's wool becoming clouds as I drifted into the sky. And suddenly there was Maurice Ravel who suddenly appeared on his own little cloud.

“When I came back to reality, the dream reminded me of this piece that Ravel wrote for his friend who lost his right arm in the First World War. So then, for fun, I just started playing with what remained (my left hand) and I composed ‘la chute’.”

“From its opening notes, it whisks listeners away. On the new album from the esteemed post-classical pianist, Blais is in perpetual bloom, moved by life's beauty and nature's song.” - Exclaim!

“...aubades finds Blais conducting a 12-person ensemble, filling in his beautiful piano melodies with lush instrumentation that brings his music to new heights.” - CBC MUSIC

Jean-Michel Blais, piano

Jean-Michel Blais
is a post-classical pianist and composer from Montreal, Canada.

Blais grew up in a rural French Catholic town in Quebec and began tinkering on his family's organ at age 9. By 11, he began writing original compositions and taking piano lessons. A natural talent, by 17 he was invited to the Trois-Rivieres Music Conservatory and began training as a classical pianist. The constraints of formal training began to wear on Blais who started to gravitate towards experimentation and improvisation. He eventually left the school and put aside his musical path. Blais moved to Europe in his mid-20s living in Berlin and spent six months in South America before settling in Montreal where he rediscovered his love for composing and performing, which caught the ear of Toronto-based indie label Arts & Crafts.

Blais’ debut album, Il, was written and recorded in his apartment over two years by improvising every day. It was released on April 8, 2016, and amassed 50 million streams worldwide, reaching #1 on Billboard’s Classical chart in Canada 14 times, earning a Polaris Music Prize long list nomination and a spot on Time Magazine’s top ten albums of 2016.

The following year, Blais performed at the prestigious Red Bull Music Academy in collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer CFCF. This spurred a partnership between the two musicians that yielded Cascades, a collaborative EP released on March 15, 2017. The release earned praises for its brave interplay piano and electronics, including by the likes of Pitchfork and BBC Radio 6’s Mary Anne Hobbs.

After a year of touring North America and Europe, Blais began working on his sophomore album, Dans ma main. Now set for release on May 11, 2018. Jean-Michel Blais’ Dans ma main is an expansive album of post-classical piano music with strands of electronic detail.

Blending his classical skill and precise pop sensibility with synthetic accompaniment, Blais creates unique environments where the piano’s intimacy can be subtly disrupted at any time. Dans ma main weaves harmony and tension in a double-helix of acoustic and electronic arpeggiation, tethering techno, industrial, ambient, and new age music to Blais’ solo piano essence.

Fascinated with the cathartic response of audiences worldwide to his pin-drop performances, Blais considers how music has served as a tool of wellness in his own life: from his early career in special education, to his parents’ use of ambient music to soothe the Tourettic symptoms he experienced as a child. On Dans ma main, Jean-Michel calls upon these periods of his life, reimagining a serenity that he previously found only seated at a piano.

Dans ma main rolls like clouds of nostalgic fog blown away on a clear wind, at once recalling and signifying the end of Il, pointing listeners to a new and possibly endless horizon of Blais’ musical imagination.

This album contains no booklet.