Biography
Quebec's big band Fanfare Pourpour traces its origins to several musical and artistic collectives active from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s, among them the Saturday-afternoon Montreal street ensemble L'Enfant Fort, the Pouet Pouet Band with its infusions of theater and cabaret, and the underground cabaret outfit Montréal Transport Limité. After the participants dispersed, their shared passion for performance drew them back together in summer 1995 under the Fanfare Pourpour banner. The group's street-band ethos supplies an endearing, ramshackle quality, and its welcoming approach has drawn in virtually any relative or acquaintance able to play a horn or strike a caisse claire, provided the right spirit prevails. Since the 1995 founding, however, the Fanfare has evolved into a disciplined, powerful unit without losing the boisterous energy that defines its purpose.
The ensemble's debut recording, Tout le Monde, appeared in 1999 on the Monsieur Fauteux M'Entendez-Vous? imprint. An eleven-piece core group anchored by Montreal singer and accordionist Lou Babin was augmented on certain tracks by prominent guests drawn from Quebec's jazz and musique actuelle circles, notably saxophonist Jean Derome and guitarist René Lussier. On the follow-up Le Bal, issued in 2004, membership expanded to fifteen plus six additional guests, while Derome assumed musical-direction duties and composed five of the sixteen pieces. Across both albums the players demonstrated fluency on an array of instruments—accordion, clarinet, saxophones, violin, flute, guitar, banjo, trumpet, euphonium, sousaphone, harmonica, darbouka, bass, drums, and percussion—delivering buoyant music that fused brass-band and classic New Orleans jazz traditions with Quebecois folk elements and avant-garde sensibilities.
Swedish composer, accordionist, and keyboardist Lars Hollmer, known for his work with Samla Mammas Manna and Accordion Tribe, was invited to Quebec in 2004 for a collaboration with the Fanfare at the Festival International de Musique Incroyable. The partnership continued with further rehearsals and a second appearance at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in 2005. Hollmer returned the next year to record Karusell Musik with the group in a Montreal studio. By this point the boundary between core members and guests had blurred, resulting in a nineteen-piece ensemble that included Lou Babin; longtime Fanfare participants such as violinist Guido del Fabbro and trumpeter Némo Venba (both also of avant-prog group Rouge Ciel), guitarists Luc Proulx and Roy Hübler, saxophonists Claude Vendette and Stéphane Ménard, clarinetist Pierre Emmanuel Poizat, and euphonium player Christine Lajeunesse; musical director, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist Derome alongside bassist Normand Guilbeault and percussionist Pierre Tanguay from the swinging Trio DGT and other jazz and musique actuelle projects; sousaphonist Jean Sabourin of the tightly knit brass band L'Orkestre des Pas Perdus; and violinist Marie-Soleil Bélanger, formerly of the enduring Miriodor. The Fanfare's command of Hollmer's intricate rhythms, emphatic backbeats, and layered arrangements—striking the right equilibrium between roughness and precision—proved difficult to surpass.
Karusell Musik reached stores in March 2007, accompanied by a launch concert at Montreal's Lion d'Or that same month. In June the band returned to the same venue for an opening-night set of Hollmer material at L'Off Festival de Jazz de Montreal. Hollmer had meanwhile organized an extensive autumn tour through France and Sweden, yet illness prevented him from traveling with the ensemble until its final date, held on 17 October 2008 at Katalin and All That Jazz in his hometown of Uppsala. He succumbed to cancer on Christmas Day 2008. The Fanfare mourned the loss and pledged to keep performing and expanding its command of his repertoire.
The ensemble's debut recording, Tout le Monde, appeared in 1999 on the Monsieur Fauteux M'Entendez-Vous? imprint. An eleven-piece core group anchored by Montreal singer and accordionist Lou Babin was augmented on certain tracks by prominent guests drawn from Quebec's jazz and musique actuelle circles, notably saxophonist Jean Derome and guitarist René Lussier. On the follow-up Le Bal, issued in 2004, membership expanded to fifteen plus six additional guests, while Derome assumed musical-direction duties and composed five of the sixteen pieces. Across both albums the players demonstrated fluency on an array of instruments—accordion, clarinet, saxophones, violin, flute, guitar, banjo, trumpet, euphonium, sousaphone, harmonica, darbouka, bass, drums, and percussion—delivering buoyant music that fused brass-band and classic New Orleans jazz traditions with Quebecois folk elements and avant-garde sensibilities.
Swedish composer, accordionist, and keyboardist Lars Hollmer, known for his work with Samla Mammas Manna and Accordion Tribe, was invited to Quebec in 2004 for a collaboration with the Fanfare at the Festival International de Musique Incroyable. The partnership continued with further rehearsals and a second appearance at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in 2005. Hollmer returned the next year to record Karusell Musik with the group in a Montreal studio. By this point the boundary between core members and guests had blurred, resulting in a nineteen-piece ensemble that included Lou Babin; longtime Fanfare participants such as violinist Guido del Fabbro and trumpeter Némo Venba (both also of avant-prog group Rouge Ciel), guitarists Luc Proulx and Roy Hübler, saxophonists Claude Vendette and Stéphane Ménard, clarinetist Pierre Emmanuel Poizat, and euphonium player Christine Lajeunesse; musical director, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist Derome alongside bassist Normand Guilbeault and percussionist Pierre Tanguay from the swinging Trio DGT and other jazz and musique actuelle projects; sousaphonist Jean Sabourin of the tightly knit brass band L'Orkestre des Pas Perdus; and violinist Marie-Soleil Bélanger, formerly of the enduring Miriodor. The Fanfare's command of Hollmer's intricate rhythms, emphatic backbeats, and layered arrangements—striking the right equilibrium between roughness and precision—proved difficult to surpass.
Karusell Musik reached stores in March 2007, accompanied by a launch concert at Montreal's Lion d'Or that same month. In June the band returned to the same venue for an opening-night set of Hollmer material at L'Off Festival de Jazz de Montreal. Hollmer had meanwhile organized an extensive autumn tour through France and Sweden, yet illness prevented him from traveling with the ensemble until its final date, held on 17 October 2008 at Katalin and All That Jazz in his hometown of Uppsala. He succumbed to cancer on Christmas Day 2008. The Fanfare mourned the loss and pledged to keep performing and expanding its command of his repertoire.
Albums
