The Story of Noel Renaissance singer Hélène Dallaire recalls: "I was rehearsing traditional Christmas songs (the ones everybody knows) for a little Holiday Season show when professor Réjane Desautel (from the Faculty of Music of Université de Montréal) told me she had a little treasure of forgotten ancient Christmas songs from France that a musicologist friend of hers had collected and given her. That wealth was on a few sheets of paper, many unsung, unheard, waiting to be brought back to life. Some songs, more recent, were somewhat known, like La Légende de Saint-Nicolas, others were known to scholars only, others were buried in time. This was too good to pass. I started singing one of them , Les Buans de Noa, ( there was no written accompaniment, just that sweet short melody), when (producer) Peter Magadini overheard, and walked in the door saying: What is that beautiful song, where did you find that? Immediately, he thought that if I had a handful of them, then they had to be recorded. These songs are very melodious, they do not surprise our ear, maybe because in our bones we recognize these ancient harmonies. Most of them have the precious appeal of being modal, they are in that stream of ancient scales that go as far back as ancient Greece and survived until the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Basse Bretagne, Haute Bretagne and other areas of France. For our ears that are inundated by the major scale, it is a refreshing change. They add a delicate beauty and are often "empreintes de nostalgie". They are very simple: remember that they were transmitted usually by people who didn't read music, and most of the time, didn't read at all. Mothers sang them to their little ones. They probably took some small liberties, here and there, sometimes inadvertantly, sometimes to be even truer to their feelings. Some of those songs were likely sung to my own ancestors when they were children, and now, by singing them and by hearing them, after all that time, I have a way to connect with these mysterious forefathers, to have an intimate access to their hearts." Even though these songs had been passed on from generation to generation, somewhere, somehow, the chain had been broken and now, they no longer had a place in the Christmas Season fabric. We, at Ibis Recordings, wanted to bring them back to life. We wanted to breathe with them, to make them breathe with us, like dear little friends, as alive now as they were a long long time ago. For that, we thought we had to stay away from treating them like museum pieces, but had to take little liberties, just like those mothers had, but nothing that would disturb the delicate balance of those humble gems. So, while always keeping the melody intact, we crafted an accompaniment of guitar, cello and a touch of percussion that, we felt, would enhance them for contemporary ears. We invite you to hear it for yourself! -Ibis Recordings Click here to order your CD now through CDBaby.com!

Contact Us Copyright © 2003