| A Conversation With Michel Rivard | |
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Paula: It's been a number of years since Maudit Bonheur, your last album, came out. What have you been doing musically since then?
Michel: I've been writing for other people. One thing that
I'm pretty proud of, I wrote words for a choral piece that involved
2000 chorists. That was in the year 2000. Two thousand amateur
chorists from all over the province of Quebec. Marie Bernard, who
was my collaborator on Un trou dans les nuages and me to write a
20 minute piece, and it was called "Vaste-est la vie" and I think
they sang it three times. It was gorgeous. I worked a lot of
time on that. I went back to the theatre; I did a tour of a
French play called Variations Enigmatiques, a play by Eric-Emmanuel Schmidt.
We did that at the TNM in Montreal, the Theatre du Nouveau Monde, and
a few months later we did a three-month tour with it in Quebec. And,
most important of all, I had a TV show, Studio TV5 which was like a
dream come true - an hour and a half of music television without
commercial breaks, and we had carte blanc as long as they were
d'accord [OK] with me. I had the pleasure to invite musicians,
songwriters, singers that I really loved. People my age, people
older than me, people younger than me, and we sat in a circle
and just played music, and we filmed the rehearsals. It was
a really a nice package, I was very happy to do that, and I
did that for two years. And after that I was really anxious
to go back on the road.
Paula: Did you know from the start that Studio TV5 was only going to be a couple of years?
Michel: Well, I'm a little bit sad that they did not ask us for
a third year. I wouldn't have done it, because I wanted to go on
tour, but I wish the show would have continued without me.
Paula: It was a really great show. How did you move from the role of being a
singer/songwriter to the role of being a show host?
Michel: I've always had a foot in many things. I've been hosting some
galas, some awards, the Gala De L'ADISQ in Montreal - I hosted that
for two years. I've hosted the SOCAN gala for about three years.
I'm an actor also, so it's kind of easy to go from singer/songwriter
to being an actor or just being a TV person. It's not what I like
the most [laughing] but this show, I was the host, but I was also a
part of the band. I sang backup with all these great singers, and
it was really nice.
Next page > Michel Rivard: Part Four >
