Le Vent du Nord Energizes Audience

GREENSBORO — Le Vent du Nord came down from Quebec and certainly lived up to its name (The Wind from the North) with its totally energizing performance to a sold out house at the Highland Center for the Arts, last Friday evening.

With its engaging program and three encores, this group is deservedly popular, having visited here for several years and is now celebrating their 22nd anniversary together. They bring the best of French Quebecois traditional and contemporary music across the border, inspiring full audience participation by encouraging clapping along with the driving rhythms, which makes it irresistible not to move in some way from toe tapping to dancing.

The five members of Le Vent du Nord are all excellent musicians and have a dynamic ensemble effect. They are, Nicolas Boulerice on vocals, piano and hurdy gurdy, Simon Beaudry on vocals and guitar, Rejean Brunet on vocals, bass guitar, accordion and piano, Andre Brunet on vocals, violin and clogging and Oliver Demars as vocals, violin, mandolin, guitar and clogging.

They started off with a lively tune with great momentum, that would be perfect for kicking up your heels on a dance floor. It was followed by a number with an even faster tempo that featured both violinists clogging on boards beneath their feet as they sat playing, which introduced a percussive element to their wall of sound in a coordinated beat.

Next was a work was by pianist Boulerice with a strong melody. The structure of many of these songs was to have a lead singer initiate the tune as the call, then a response from the other members of the band, repeating the phrase.

Next they played a piece that was dedicated to the St. Lawrence River, some 755 miles in length, where the first French settlements occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. It featuring the pianist singing with his warm, expressive voice. There was a beautiful flow to this song.

The sixth offering had an instrument that one seldom sees in concerts, the hurdy gurdy, skillfully played by Boulerice in an old tune handed down from the grandfather of Beaudry, with a lovely well-developed melody.

Rejean Brunet showed his enthusiastic musicianship, playing his accordion in the following number with his very agile fingers as he moved about the stage, adding an entertaining visual element to the performance through body language.

Boulerice returned with his hurdy gurdy while Beaudry sang another energetic dance piece, all of them coming up to the edge of the stage to further connect to the audience.

After intermission, Beaudry continued with his fine voice singing a selection that had a rambling rhythm, ending in imaginative improvisations by one of the violinists. The mandolinist (Demars) joined with the other violin player (Andre Brunet) in a duet before doubling the violins and adding the accordion to the mix with a great upbeat tempo. The smiles on the faces of all the musicians as they interacted indicated how much they were enjoying playing their music.

Further pieces featured the hurdy gurdy, in an older tune going back generations, sung by Rejean Brunet. Next came the two violinists together, an extended solo by the hurdy gurdy (Boulerice) that was quite fascinating in its rich harmonies and lilting rhythms, a bright, joyous piece and then a nonsense syllable work.

A melody from 1758 (before the defeat of the French by the British in 1760) had a fairly fast pace, while the last number brought all the musicians together in a triumphant finale.

But the appreciative audience wanted the concert to go on, so Le Vent du Nord responded by coming back for three encores. The first repeated the refrain “au revoir” while they waved their hands goodbye, the second had a tune with wonderful momentum, and the third was a haunting melody in a subdued tempo.

In the course of this concert there were many times when the audience spontaneously rose to their feet in their delight for the performance, particularly when the band was toasting with glasses of wine and they gave the line, “a toast to everyone who thinks a neighbor can always be a friend,” in reference to current U.S. relations with Canada. Music is the opposite of fear and hatred; it brings us together with people around the world to celebrate all that is good in life through its beauty. Truly music is a powerful form of love.