Pierre Lapointe brings orchestral reimagining of classics to Maison symphonique
For the first time in nearly 20 years, the singer reunites La forêt des mal-aimés with the Orchestre Métropolitain, adding a suite of new songs about heartbreak.
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Pierre Lapointe is returning to the Maison symphonique Thursday and Friday with a symphonic reimagining of his beloved albums La forêt des mal-aimés and Dix chansons démodées pour ceux qui ont le cœur abîmé.
Almost 20 years ago, Lapointe performed La forêt des mal-aimés with the Orchestre Métropolitain on the Francos main stage—a moment that crystallized his ambitions and marked his rapid ascent. At the time, composer Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the orchestra, with contemporary-music composers layering arrangements over his band's foundation. The result landed somewhere between pop and classical.
This time is different. Lapointe performs alone with the orchestra, and the arrangement is fully symphonic. Arranger Antoine Gratton, who has worked extensively in television variety (La voix, Star Académie), spent rehearsals Wednesday refining the orchestrations for both albums. "[Pierre] told me to do what I wanted," Gratton said, noting that the dramatic and tragic qualities of Lapointe's songs translate naturally to orchestral language.
Lapointe himself finds the context "natural," despite the word's surprise. The rich textures of his earlier albums already supported this kind of arrangement—and his theatrical presence on stage has always invited orchestral scale. Gratton observes there is "drama and even tragedy" in the songs themselves.
For Lapointe, the reunion is the fruit of a collaboration that began when director Serge Denoncourt first spotted him in theatre school. Denoncourt, who mounted Les trois mousquetaires in 2015 (a classical spectacle with large casts and period costumes), jumped at the chance to direct this concert. "I love it like a little boy in a sandbox," Denoncourt said of classical material. But large-scale classical theatre is becoming rare. "For the actors and me, it allows us to work a language, an epoch where characters are very far from us in how they speak and carry themselves. So we work a kind of theatricality." This is the eighth collaboration between Denoncourt and Lapointe since 2011.