Last Wednesday’s concert in the RBA was a showcase for the collaborative pianists of the McGill-UdeM Piano Vocal Arts programme.  Each of the five pianists on show got to accompany mezzo Julie Boulianne for a set of songs.  Or put another way, Julie got to perform for an hour with five pianists.

Each set had a certain internal coherence plus enough variety to allow the pianist to demonstrate his/her skills.  So Cynthia Lau accompanied Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques.  Jerome de los Santos joined Julie for two songs by Korngold and two by Alma Mahler.  Anson Ng played for a rather lovely set of Hahn songs.  Jeongmin Oak provided the accompaniment for four of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder.  And, finally Tanguy Verneuil played for a set of very silly Apollinaire settings by Poulenc.

The pianists were all excellent and versatile but one couldn’t but admire Julie for singing expressively and accurately (the notes anyway) for nearly an hour in two languages and with a crazy variety of moods.  And of course with the accompanist changing every few minutes.  All in all a pretty good way to spend a lunch hour.

Photo credit: Dan Truong