Jean-Michel Blais
Dans ma main
Dans ma main, the sophomore release by pianist and composer Jean-Michel Blais, is an expansive album of post-classical piano with strands of electronic detail. Blending his conservatory skill and precise pop sensibility with synthetic accompaniment, Blais creates unique environments where the piano’s intimacy can be subtly disrupted at any time.
Growing up in rural Quebec, Blais began writing original compositions by age 11, and by 17 was invited to the Trois-Rivières Music Conservatory. However, the constraints of formal training drew Blais off this musical course, putting aside his piano until years later, settling in Montreal, he rediscovered his love.
Dans ma main explores an everyday life awash in spirituality, stemming from Blais’ interplay with music as therapy. Compelled by the cathartic air that audiences exude in his pin-drop performances, Blais considers how music has served as a tool of wellness in his own life. From his prior career in special education, to the role classical and ambient music played soothing the Tourettic symptoms he experienced as a child, Jean-Michel’s new compositions subconsciously call upon these periods of his life, reimagining a serenity he had only experienced seated at the piano.
Largely composed in one week of open exploration, Blais comes closer to the improvisational source of his writing, painting impressionistic stories within the fluid, indefinite outlines of dreams. Dans ma main rolls like clouds of nostalgic fog blown away on a clear wind, at once recalling and signifying the end of Il, his critically acclaimed 2016 debut album.