Quebec tunes sheet music

I had a couple different people hitting my site today looking for sheet music to La Bottine Souriante tunes–specifically, “Hommage à Philippe Brunea” and “Valse d’hiver”.
Since I am not actually a sheet music site, I direct interested parties to these links:

Failing either of those, TheSession.org may be able to help you. I’ve periodically found Quebec tunes there, though I use it as a tertiary resource.
You may or may not be able to find tunes composed by specific Quebec artists. I’ve found things composed by André Brunet (who in fact has a few of his tunes available in PDF form here, along with tunes by a couple of other people), and a couple of things composed by Olivier Demers (“Gigue à trois”, which is on the Montreal session tunebook site) and the guys in Genticorum (again on the Montreal site, but a couple on TheSession.org as well–notably for them I’ve found “Violon guérisseur” and “Valse de poeles”, the first on the Montreal session site and the second on TheSession.org).
I will also note that the lovely people at the core of the session I go to, La Famille Leger, have a collection of accordion-friendly tunes right over here. I note also that I am NOT an accordion player, but as I am a flautist, stuff that’s easily playable in D is very friendly to my flutes.
Happy tunes hunting, my fellow instrumentalists!

Death by harmony, exactly how I wanna go

Those of you who’ve read my writeup of the amazing time Dara and I had seeing Le Vent du Nord in Victoria this past April may have noticed how one of my very favorite parts of the entire show was when les gars started belting out “Le Retour du Fils Soldat”. Four-part harmony, right in front of me and Dara, YUM.
I’d said at the time that you should all find this song ASAP, though I couldn’t find a video of it on YouTube. A kind soul has now CORRECTED this little problem, and my friend and fellow devoted Le Vent fan Susan pointed me at this delightful thing.
BEHOLD! “Le Retour du Fils Soldat”, now joining “General Taylor” and “River Driver” on the list of Songs That Have Killed Me Ded of Harmony:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tCg8_ePpbU?hl=en_US&version=3&w=560&h=315]

Quelle belle surprise!

(Apologies in advance to people reading the LJ/DW mirror of this post–Bandcamp embeds don’t work on those sites, so I’m directing traffic for it over to my main site. Click over to the original angelahighland.com post to see the embeds rendering properly.)
Well now, this was a lovely surprise!
Being a fan of Genticorum, and in particular of the work of Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand (and his duo work with his wife Mélisande as well), led me over to finding out about La Prûche Libre, a label for Quebec trad. I saw them posting about a new album via their Facebook page last night–and if I read the post correctly it was in connection with Memoire et Racines this weekend. Which got my interest up, so I clicked over to their Bandcamp page to check it out.
This was the first album of theirs that I looked at!
Résistance by Barbo
And while I was at it I checked it out this one as well–because the cover art attracted me. The singer totally made me think “HEY, she’s a brunette Shenner!” Those of you who know me from my Star Wars MUSH days may remember that my character Shenner was in fact a redheaded version of Karen Allen in the Star Wars MUSH movie in my brain, so this is really a roundabout way of the singer reminding me of Karen Allen. Regardless, it caught my eye! So then I actually played some of the tracks, and decided yes, her voice is lovely, so I wanted the music too.
D'est en ouest (Mélanie Boucher) by La prûche libre
Last but not least I had to grab this one by a quartet called La Cantinière. It’s not even out yet but I’m making a point of pre-ordering it, since it’s involving three of the gentlemen previously involved with La Volée d’Castors–who y’all may recall are one of the major Quebec bands I’ve been adoring for a while now. Those guys are in fact the second ones after La Bottine Souriante who got my attention, since they were the ones who, way back in the day, got mentioned on the OKP on one of the recurring “If you like Great Big Sea, you’ll also like…” threads.
Now, though, I just got email from somebody on the La Prûche Libre staff! He wrote to thank me for the support of their music and to offer me download codes for a couple more of their albums, which I gratefully accepted!
The first of the two albums he offered me is this one. As a long-time fan of La Bottine Souriante I absolutely know the name Yves Lambert. That legendary performer is in fact one of my strongest memories of seeing La Bottine back in 2000, because it was his voice I remember sounding rich and round and full. He’s happily still doing music even though he’s not involved with La Bottine anymore, and so I’d already decided to investigate his more recent endeavors. I didn’t, however, have this album yet!
Trio (Yves Lambert, Olivier Rondeau, Tommy Gauthier by La prûche libre
And the second album is this one. As I hope I explained to the nice gentleman from La Prûche Libre, I wasn’t familiar with M. Lepage. The email I got says he unfortunately passed away last year, but I’ll be happy for the opportunity to learn a bit more about some of the longstanding performers of the genre and to see what they’ve contributed to this music I’ve come to love.
Le temps (Lawrence Lepage) by La prûche libre
So yeah. Mes petites pouvoirs d’écriture en français, activez! Here’s hoping I replied to the nice man from La Prûche Libre coherently! And here’s to what promises to be a lovely expansion of my Quebec trad collection!

I am a folk music resource!

Well, for a small number of bands, anyway! Because apparently this is the week for people to hit my site trying to find out about the instruments played by my favorite groups.

Yesterday somebody came by with the search term ‘what mouth instruments do le vent du nord play?’ Answer: just one! Réjean Brunet plays the mouth harp. You can hear it all over a lot of their songs and you can see it in various live videos. Like this one! The mouth harp shows up in the second song in this vid, “Au bord de la fontaine”, which kicks in around the 6:57 mark. Though I heartily endorse watching the first song, “Lanlaire”, too!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YwzFzrqnQY?version=3&hl=en_US&w=560&h=315]

And today’s search term is ‘what flutes do great big sea use’. Answer: none! Séan McCann and Bob Hallett play whistles–Séan plays a small tin whistle but only on “Run Run Away”, and Bob breaks out the big low whistle for things like “Boston and St. John’s”. Behold the whistle in action!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW_pYiLofvY?hl=en_US&version=3&w=560&h=315]

To those of you who came by looking, in case you see this post, I hope this is helpful!

Two more fun pics of me and De Temps Antan

Dara put up a few posts of her own detailing her POV of our adventures in Harrison Hot Springs, including a loverly picspam of various things we looked at. Including a couple of shots off of her camera of me and the boys of De Temps Antan!

I particularly like this one, of my reaction when I got called out for being a double agent for Le Vent du Nord, since I was wearing their T-shirt:

LOL
Quebec Boys are Amused When I Explode from LOL

Go click over to Dara’s post to see the other one, of me and Éric Beaudry, current holder of the title of Anna’s Favorite Bouzouki Player from Quebec!

A periodic reminder on one of my FAQs: my various names

Dara and I went to my monthly Quebecois session tonight, and we had a lovely time at that, but while we were there I got asked again what’s up with my having multiple names in active use online. So since this is kind of confusing, here’s a quick post explaining what’s up with that and what you should call me!

Angela Korra’ti is my actual name. It’s the name you’ll see me using at work, and it’s the name you’ll see on any book I self-publish. So far, that’s Faerie Blood and the forthcoming Bone Walker.

Angela Highland is my commercial pen name. Highland is my original surname, and since I was encouraged by my agent and by Carina’s chief editor to seriously consider using a name besides Korra’ti as a pen name, I decided to use “Highland” instead. When you see me using this name, it’s in the context of books I publish via Carina. Right now that’s Valor of the Healer. Moving forward it’ll also be the rest of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, as well as any other commercial sales I make.

(This’ll be a shorthand way of being able to tell what things I commercially publish vs. what things I self-pub, in other words.)

Anna (and by extension, Anna the Piper) is my nickname and how I got that nickname is a bit of a personal story, so suffice to say it’s derived from my middle name. “Anna the Piper” is a a specific extension of that nickname and was given to me in the context of music and being a piccolo player, and so this is why I use “annathepiper” or “Anna the Piper” pretty much everywhere as an online nickname.

Now, here’s the fun question: what should you call me?

I almost always use Angela when I’m being more formal, when I’m dealing with people who don’t know me well enough yet to get the Angela vs. Anna thing, or when I’m dealing with people I’m not likely to deal with on a regular basis. I’m “Angela” at my day job, for example. But you’ll notice I’m also “Angela” on the social networks. This is because I pretty much do need to be searchable under both my pen names so people can find information about me and my books.

However, I use “Anna” pretty much all the time outside of that. All my friends call me Anna, and I will almost always refer to myself as Anna when I’m posting about myself or signing email.

If in doubt, consider yourself pretty much welcome to call me Anna!

But honestly, it’s okay if you call me Angela, too. For that matter, my family members often call me Angie or Ang. (Pronounced “anj”, not to be confused with Aang, the Avatar.) So I’m well accustomed to those nicknames, too! It’s all me, and it’s all good. Pick whichever works for you and as long as it’s reasonably obvious you’re talking to me, I’m cool!

(Though any French speakers reading this, you might warn me first before you start calling me Anne or Annette or Angèle or Ange!)

And now, to solve an ongoing problem

My belovedest of Daras is at a bit of a loss when it comes to comprehending my rampageous affection for Quebecois traditional music. She doesn’t speak a lick of French, and so I could mention any one of the various bands I’m following, only to have their names just parse to her as “French sounds”. And it didn’t help matters much either when we went up to Harrison Hot Springs this past weekend–because two of the guys in De Temps Antan ARE brothers of guys in Le Vent du Nord, and the sets of brothers in question do look rather alike!
Several of you who read me on a regular basis won’t be having these problem, but in case you’re in the same boat Dara is and find yourself trying to figure out who all these people are I keep enthusiastically babbling about, here. I present for you this handy flowchart for how to tell apart my seven favorite Quebecois traditional bands!

Quebec Band Flowchart
Quebec Band Flowchart

Never let it be said that I am not helpful!

Harrison Hot Springs BC July 2013 trip, Day 4: Heading home

Not much more to report about the Harrison Hot Springs trip, but I do have enough to do a quick followup post!

I’d said in the previous post that there’d been an accident at the festival. Over on Facebook, Dejah threw me a link on a local paper’s website about the accident. The Agassiz-Harrison Observer reported that a family of four was involved, and that while there were some injuries and the father needed surgery, mostly everybody was more or less okay. Two vehicles were involved, and the driver of the SUV was arrested. (Dara and I and those with us at the second De Temps Antan show wound up seeing that SUV later, just after the concert. It was pretty badly banged up.)

After the DTA show on Sunday night, Dara and I took it pretty easy. We scampered over to one of the shops to get fudge (mmmmm fudge), and then saw the boys of the band, Dejah, Ginny, and Gary heading to dinner. Amused jokes were made about not stalking the band we SWEAR. And though everybody yelled farewells to us (I noted the good M. Brunet in particular yelling over in our direction), we left them to it since we wanted to hide in our B&B room for a while. And I had important pic-posting business to attend to!

We did later emerge for dinner of our own, though, and had Thai food on a restaurant balcony overlooking the lake. Our waiter turned out to be a bass player as well and Dara chatted with him a bit about the jam session we’d been informed would be happening at the lounge next door later that night. Dara did wind up hitting that jam session for a little bit, though I opted to take one last round of advantage of the jacuzzi in our room.

The next morning, we got up in a leisurely fashion, got our stuff all packed and ready to go, and headed west to Vancouver! On the way, heading along TC-1, I spotted a road sign that deeply amused us in our capacity as massive Elfquest fangirls.

(I mean, Clearbrook must live somewhere, right? Maybe this is the exit that leads to the Wolfrider Holt!)

[foogallery id=”26856″ limit=”1″]

After that, we went over a toll bridge we’d been warned about and which we hoped would be clever enough to note that we were an American license plate, not a Canadian one, since we’d been told it worked by snapping photos of licenses and billing the drivers. We don’t know yet if we’ll get a bill from British Columbia, but guess we’ll find out! I did like one of the pics I got going over the bridge, though.

[foogallery id=”26856″ limit=”1″ offset=”1″]

Our agenda in Vancouver was a couple of quick surgical strikes on places we wanted to get to, and the first of these was the Laser Cutter Cafe in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Because tea. And LASERS!

We had a pleasant chat with the guys in there, including a guy named Adrian who was selling his digital carving art via the cafe. And while we didn’t actually carve anything, it was cool to see the machines the guys had available and the various and sundry little things on shelves that had come out of them. I particularly liked the little Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Dara even got to talk up her music a bit and one of the guys piped “Shout At the Desert” over the cafe’s sound system. To wit: awesome.

And just to be thorough we did in fact also have tea! Which was very welcome, given that we hadn’t had any tea at all in Harrison. Our room at the B&B had included some bag tea in the stock of breakfast foods we’d been provided–but none of it was stuff we’d wanted to drink, actually!

[foogallery id=”26860″]

We left kind of earlier than we wanted to, since the place was pretty cool–but we didn’t want to run our parking meter out, and we did actually have to get back on the road in order to get home in time for dinner.

Not to mention that we needed lunch, and it was critical, critical we tell you, to stop at Siegels Bagels for our obligatory few dozen bagels to bring home. Because yum.

And our last stop was at the mall that Dara likes to call Chibi Akihabara, but which is actually called Yaohan. She wanted to pop in there on general principles but also to see if she could find a replacement holder for her passport. She did not. What was kind of lollertastic though was that I found a cute new case for my phone!

[foogallery id=”26856″ offset=”2″ limit=”1″]

I was pretty happy with that case, because it was cute but not TOO cute, and also form-fitting without adding bulk to the device. My previous case had that going on, too, but the molded plastic over the Sleep/Wake button seemed like it interfered with the button’s functionality. (Which may or may not have actually been the button wearing out on me–I don’t know! I had to replace the phone today!) I like this case better also though because it gives better open access to the top and bottom of the phone.

Only when we were aiming to get on the highway at last and head home did we realize that we had ERRED: i.e., we’d forgotten to visit a Timmy’s! Forgive us, Canada, for we did not actually indulge in Timbits! We’ll be making up for this next time we set foot in your lovely country, we promise!

Last but not least it’s worth mentioning that on the whole trip, on the way up and on the way back as well, Dara and I worked to get caught up on the Doctor Who Podcast! We’re big fans and quite enjoyed a marathon of listening to the podcast crew on the road. We’ll be doing more on our next road trip, to Clallam Bay, this coming weekend. Stand by for that report, O Internets!

AND! I was charmed to see that the Twitter account for Tourism Harrison, @harrisontourism, actually found my mention this morning of the posting I’d been doing. They quite liked my writeup! Which is all lovely, given that we enjoyed ourselves in Harrison immensely. And we will be coming back!

Harrison Hot Springs BC July 2013 trip, Day 3: De Temps Antan, Round 2

In which our heroine and supervillain hike around the lake, in which the mammoth makes a break for it (but is thankfully recovered!), in which the festival suffers an accident (which we do not see), and in which perfectly ridiculous amounts of fun are had seeing De Temps Antan–and then getting pics with them afterwards! With Jean-Claude!
Continue reading “Harrison Hot Springs BC July 2013 trip, Day 3: De Temps Antan, Round 2”