Just last month (August 25) Montreal singer-songwriter Charlotte Cardin released her 2nd studio album, 99 Nights. We were lucky enough to have the model-turned-musician stop by our studio to share some of her pivotal live music moments.
Beyoncé
"I saw Beyoncé on the Beyoncé Experience Tour in 2006 in Montreal at the Bell Centre. To this day, one of the best concerts I have seen in my entire life. So cool with her dancers. The whole stage design was really, really cool. We were just the two of us with my best friend at the time. The entire section in front of us was kind of like empty, so it was just the two of us in the very back, but right in front of the stage. And the craziest, craziest thing that happened, we had bought glow sticks for the show, and at the end of the show, Beyoncé was like, "So I wanna know who are my biggest fans tonight?" And then she went like, "Thank you so much, you in the front with your beautiful poster that you made."
And then she was like, "And thank you so much to the two girls in the back with the glow sticks. You were dancing the entire time." We just looked at each other and we were like, "Did that just happen? Are we like basically now friends with Beyonce?"
"I was dreaming of becoming a performer, a singer. I had already been singing for years at that point. We don't have musicians in the family, or you know, so it was kind of a thing where that was my ultimate dream, but I didn't know if it was even possible. And so seeing such an inspiring concert to me was just like a bit of a revelation. I was like, "I wanna do that at some point, like I wanna be on stage, and I wanna share like beautiful moments like that." And to this day, I still have goosebumps when I think about it."
James Blake
"I saw James Blake live, I think, three or four times. He's one of my favorite artists. But my favorite concert that I've seen of him was at Primavera, a festival in Barcelona. And I knew of James Blake, like I knew his song "Retrograde." I was already a fan, but I didn't know that many songs of his. And when I saw him live for the first time at Primavera, I was mind blown, like the performance, the precision of his vocals, the live setup, how it felt so intimate, yet it was in front of like dozens of thousands of people. It just felt like he was talking to each and every single person individually, when he was singing those songs and telling those stories. He is so concentrated and in his bubble, and you feel like you almost get a glimpse at like how he makes the music when he performs it live. I've seen him in a pretty small venue in Montreal. I've seen him in a few different festivals, and he's always able to just like show a new part of his vulnerability. It's just, it's so honest. I recommend that anyone on this planet should see James Blake live at some point."
Jean-Michel Blais
"I saw Jean-Michel Blais in Paris this year a few months ago. Jean Michel is a French Canadian pianist. He actually played a little very intimate private showcase in a space that's not technically a venue in Paris. It's actually a painter's workshop. The space happens to have a Steinway piano. I think it's from like 1913, like a super old Steinway. And the way the venue is set up is that it still has all of the canvases, and all of the painter's tools kind of like scattered around the room. So the setting itself is quite breathtaking. He was playing his beautiful songs on the Steinway piano, talking about how he wrote the songs. There was no like mic involved. It was just like him, the piano. There was maybe like 20 of us there, and it was so intimate, and everyone had goosebumps. And he did this one thing that I had never seen before. The top of the piano was like open. And so he stood up at one point, and started playing with the strings of the piano while he was playing with the keys. And so it kind of felt just like a string instrument that was involved. I had never heard anyone play with a piano that way. So it was a very playful and unique performance. It was just one of the most beautiful live experiences I've ever witnessed."
Charlotte Cardin is on tour now, with dates running through February of next year - and a bunch of dates are already sold out! Complete listing here.
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