At this rate, no orchestra office in France, Navarre or elsewhere risks finding itself unemployed. While pop and variety never ceases to celebrate its legacy with a multitude of cover albums and tribute concerts turning it more and more into repertoire music, one exercise is now in vogue: adapting the songs into version ” symphonic”, giving their composers the singers. the opportunity to satisfy his dreams of grandeur – and perhaps confront his complexes – with musicians from the Conservatory.
French song has traditionally used strings and brass through connections with arrangers and orchestrators experienced in writing scores: François Rauber with Jacques Brel, Paul Mauriat for Charles Aznavour, Alain Goraguer with Jean Ferrat or Jean-Michel Defaye with Léo Ferré. .. These collaborations declined in the 1980s with the reign of the synthesizer, which made possible the drastic reduction of artistic budgets. In December 1989, however, Véronique Sanson went against the grain by performing her hits surrounded by the Prague Symphony Orchestra at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Experience documented by the album Symphonic Sanson. The term would then be systematized.
The missing and the living
In this game, everyone is involved: stentorian voice (Serge Lama with symphony in 1998 or Florent Pagny for Baritone in 2004) as more fragile stamps (Miossec with the Avignon-Provence Regional Lyric Orchestra in 2003 or Jane Birkin with the album Birkin/Gainsbourg: symphonic in 2017). Even the missing ones. The success of the posthumous album Johnny in 2019 it could only encourage such initiatives among record industry decision makers. The singing of the deceased idol two years earlier had been isolated and accompanied by a symphonic production by his musical director Yvan Cassar. The process was used for the 60th anniversary of the death of Edith Piaf (1915-1963) in the album symphonywith new arrangements performed by British Phalangists, Canadian singer Isabelle Boulay taking on the “la Môme” repertoire for a Piaf symphony. The titles, as we see, do not compete in originality.
Again on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Charles Aznavour: a Aznavour symphony it was presented on September 28 and 29 at the Philharmonie de Paris with a cast of singers (Yael Naim, Zaz, Keren Ann and Charlie Winston) and the Lamoureux Orchestra. For November 8, a Noëmi Waysfeld plays Barbara (Sony Classical), this time with the Orchestra national d’Avignon.
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