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A café in Paris, a cocktail lounge in Palm Springs, a beach bar in Rio de Janeiro, a Lokanta in Istanbul. Jill Barber's French repertoire is played all over the world and has earned her a fan base that transcends language barriers.
This is a surprising achievement for an Anglo-Canadian artist who only began her love affair with the French language in her late twenties, after an inspiring moment at the Montreal Jazz Festival where she sang a few notes in French to a rapturous crowd.
Shortly thereafter, Barber enrolled in a French school for late starters in the south of France and eventually came out with her own recordings of the songs and poets that inspired her: Piaf, Gainsbourg, Aznavour. She titled the collection Chansons. The album was released in 2013. Chansons quickly became her most
most successful album worldwide to date. It was streamed over 120 million times, received countless playlist placements, gained 1.25 monthly listeners on Spotify and sparked tours to Europe, Japan, Mexico and the Middle East, as well as appearances at top jazz festivals across Canada. "For me, singing in French is an embodied, sensual experience... it's a new language in which I can explore and express myself artistically - and be vulnerable." A decade later, Jill has teamed up again with Grammy-nominated producer Drew Jurecka (Dua Lipa, Alvvays, Dermot Kennedy) to produce ENCORE!, the long-awaited sequel to Chansons. It's a beautifully arranged and lushly orchestrated album of brand new interpretations of classic songs by Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet, Blossom Dearie, Django Reinhardt and Barbara Ordinaire, made famous by Robert Charlebois and Céline Dion, shows Jill interpreting the Quebec classic with a hauntingly beautiful performance. "I approached this performance like an actor and became the main character of the song in all its fragility." De temps en temps was published in 1939 by the African-American Josephine Baker and made her a star with the song. "Back then, it was daring for a woman to sing about her desire for physical affection without the need for a relationship - and I think it's still pretty sexy and encouraging today." The French have a saying for a particularly pleasurable feeling that is so unique it's hard to put into words - when Jill Barber sings in French, there's a pleasant quality, a "je ne sais quoi" that's hard to describe but easy to enjoy. Now she's done it again -
ENCORE!
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