Daniel Lavoie sings in Moscow

Newspaper «Kommersant», No 83 (4383), 05.13.2010

Pop concert

Daniel Lavoie, a French singer and composer, the interpreter of the role of Frollo in the musical «Notre-Dame de Paris», gave a performance at the Central House of Culture of the Railroad Workers [CHCRW]. BORIS BARABANOV was surprised by the enthusiasm of the Russian women.

To be precise, Daniel Lavoie is not French, but Canadian, like Garou and Bruno Pelletier, another two favorites of the Moscow public, who became famous thanks to the original stage version of the musical «Notre Dame de Paris» by Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante. The native of Marseille Patrick Fiori is in the same merry company. These four are a true phenomenon of the Moscow guest performance scene. Without having any big hits here other that their arias from «Notre-Dame de Paris» the gentlemen Garou, Pelletier and Fiori have become regular visitors, and now monsieur Lavoie has reached Moscow. These four are being actively promoted on the local market by the entrepreneur Ildar Bakeev («Euro Entertainment», «19-00.ru»). He also made the unprecedented step of arranging Daniel Lavoie’s concert not just without an outdoor advertising, but also without internet banners, using only the support of a community that he created in the social network «VKontakte» with the name «We invite our favorite performers on tour ourselves».

The 700-seat CHCRW auditorium wasn’t filled to the last seat, however mister Bakeev still considers this a big success, because originally he was planning to sell the tickets only for the orchestra section, and eventually the audience was sitting even on the balcony, and all that without any investments in advertisement. Besides «Notre Dame de Paris», monsieur Lavoie has one more «bridge» to the Russian listeners. It is the song «Ils s'aiment», which gained popularity thanks to  «The Maids» by Roman Viktiuk. The soundtrack for this theatrical production at the end of the 1980-s was considered in the USSR virtually the epitome of an expensive and refined pop music. There is definitely an element of hard-to-resist magic in the song «Ils s'aiment». It’s enough to remind oneself about the best song by Konstantin Meladze “There is no more gravity”, in which without doubt one can hear the overtones of «Ils s'aiment». Knowing the tastes of his Russian admirers Daniel Lavoie saved the hit for the very end and performed it immediately after the «Notre Dame de Paris» medley.

The singer made special preparations for this part of the show. He got up from the piano, made a gesture of a mime changing a mask and announced in Russian that he is yielding way to his old friend Frollo. The sequence of songs from «Notre Dame de Paris» also was a special gift for the Russians – monsieur Lavoie arranged them for pianospecially for Moscow.

The rest of the almost 2-hour long program consisted of Daniel Lavoie’s songs from various years, performed with piano accompaniment. Between them the musician recited poems, both his own and written by others. Judging by the audience’s reaction, Moscow knows perfectly well not just Frollo and the song from «The Maids». The audience knowingly applauded to roughly half of the songs, which means it is familiar with the repertoire of all the 40 years of Daniel Lavoie’s career. The poetic intermissions were often accompanied by laughter. In the audience there was a primarily French-speaking crowd, who nevertheless were evidently our 18-20-year old female compatriots, who by the end of the evening literally built a mountain of flowers on the piano. The gray-haired gentleman who has recently turned 61 thrills the young female concert-goers both as a musician and as a performer and as a man. Well, Mic Jagger also looks great at 66. But would he be showered with flowers in the same way if he performed in Moscow to a piano, remains questionable. The local story with the francophone musical heroes is indeed something completely extraordinary.

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1367668&NodesID=8

Translated by Anna None