What we expect from a tribute is emotion. Undeniably touching moments where hearts that do not know each other vibrate in unison. It happened on Tuesday during the musical farewell to Jean-Pierre Ferland, who died in April, when Julie-Anne Saumur sang A little higher, a little further.
Up until then, we had been treated to some beautiful numbers. Like You’re My Love, You’re My Mistress by Hubert Lenoir and Ariane Roy. Like When We Love We’re Always 20 and Sing Sing by Lou-Adriane Cassidy, Thierry Larose and Ariane Roy again. Like Les fleurs de macadam by Louis-Jean Cormier, Vincent Vallières and Patrice Michaud, who then did Envoye à maison and encouraged the crowd to get stuck in with Le plus beau slow.
Great numbers, but nothing to turn our hearts upside down. Then, Ariane Moffatt, artistic director of this show called Les petits rois, invited Julie-Anne Saumur to sing A little higher, a little further. The song with which Ginette Reno lifted Mount Royal in 1975 and the Plains of Abraham decades later. With his friend Jean-Pierre. And Celine.
Hearing Ferland’s last lover sing phrases like “a little higher, a little further, I can’t hold your hand anymore”, with her eyes shining, it was heartbreakingly moving.
The other great emotional moment of the evening came just after. Vincent Vallières said that at the end of his adolescence, he and his friends listened to rock. Radiohead, among others. And Jean-Pierre Ferland… Who had just released Listen Not That, the immense album which marked his return in 1995. The record with which he ensured the affection of ears several decades younger than his own.
Vincent Vallières is not a great singer. It wasn’t the biggest voice on stage Tuesday – Marie Denise Pelletier and Marie-Pierre Athur were there… No big deal.
We were about halfway through the show at that point. The job was done. Tribute there had been. All that remained was to feed the fire. What Marie-Pierre Arthur did by inviting her chosen family from Montreal (François Lafontaine, Louis-Jean Cormier and Ariane Moffatt) to sing with her I come back to ours, a song that she still sings with her family when she returns to Gaspésie . After a version of Music by Martha Wainwright which unfortunately lacked delicacy.
Feeding the fire meant stirring the cage a little too. As Ferland liked to do. Karkwa took care of it with his foot heavy on Le chat du café des artistes and God Is an American, accompanied by several performers. The most beautiful and great delirium, however, came from Hubert Lenoir, fierce in Si on s’y put, a song that he had covered on his album Darlène and that he had the opportunity to sing on TV with Jean- Pierre Ferland himself. The late poet looked like he was having dark fun on the small screen.
This beautiful tribute was inevitably going to end with Une chance qu’on s’a. Which, inevitably, was touching. However, Ariane Moffatt was smarter than that. After this beautiful moment, she had the idea of placing another song, The sun takes to the sun. Brilliant idea, because it was with the repetition of the line “Oh, how beautiful it is, seen from above” that this inspiring and inspired farewell to Ferland ended.
