Montréal-based pianist-composer Jean-Michel Blais exchanges contemporary minimalism for a light and generous maximalism with his fourth album ‘mirador’.

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Jean-Michel Blais was ready to make an epic. mirador, the pianist-composer’s fourth album. mirador is an odyssey that spans choirs, strings and the music of the Andes, running from Spanish caves to Estonian forests and back again to the hideaway in tiny Nicolet, Québec, where Blais first imagined the adventures that might await him.

After 375 million streams and the biggest concerts of his life, the origins of mirador were remembrances from Blais’ childhood. Back then, he was a musical kid dreaming up worlds in his basement: turning pages in a Larousse encyclopedia; arranging its volumes into a castle; playing with Fisher Price instruments and his family’s cheap Hammond organ; endlessly replaying the same cassettes. Even if he wasn’t fully aware of these things yet, as a queer person, a person with Tourette’s, the basement was Blais’ refuge—an imaginary lookout, a ‘mirador’.

Four albums into his career, Jean-Michel Blais is no longer just charting the map of his grown-up heart: on mirador, he offers a path back to childhood—a chance to listen anew, gazing into the imaginary.

Presented with Bird On The Wire.

This event will last approximately 75 minutes with no interval.

Description supplied by the event organiser.