Sandra Le Couteur
La demoiselle du traversier
French songs wrote by Acadiens, Quebecois, and French authors.
Sandra LeCouteur
Music, literature, film, theatre
Voted "Public choice" in the French
magazine "Chorus" (www.chorus-chanson.fr)
Spring/summer 2006.
-The brilliant Acadian performer, Sandra LeCouteur, has just released her sumptuous album of songs filled with poetic range like you rarely hear. She sings with the most remarkable control and simplicity which make you always wanting more. "La demoiselle du traversier", managed by Francis Covan, offers a variety of sounds including beautiful arrangements with the piano, the accordion and the violin. The lyrics are perfectly written with all the depth and richness of the French language. The"Grande Dame" would best describe this achieved artist, who delivers in this master piece a performance considered by many as powerful and unique.-
Francis Hébert, Voir, Montréal, Canada
www.voir.ca
First album: La demoiselle du traversier, launched in the Maritimes on May 10, 2005. Production is by Francis Covan.
This album, which is an artistic concept, brings together 12 titles signed by Acadian, Quebec and French authors. Her rendition of the Léo Ferré song, C’est extra, prompted Léo's daughter, Marie Christine Ferré, to send her a beautiful greeting card. On the album cover, you will find a very nice note from Dany Laferrière, written while he was listening to the song Absence from Gilles Bélanger.
The art on the album cover is the work of Lise Rocher, painter, and is titled Portrait de Sandra LeCouteur. The booklet is illustrated by Mélanie Gionet and by the young painter Alexandre Robichaud, winner of the Grand prix de la francophonie at the 2003 Atlantic Visual Arts Festival (Festival des arts visuels en Atlantique). Sandra has been invited to perform all over Atlantic Canada. In Quebec, she performed four times at the Stella Artois theatre of the Place des Arts. In June 2004, she was invited to Vancouver's francophone festival, among artists like Édith Butler, Paul Piché, and Arianne Moffatt. She did three tours in France, during which she met Mr. René Feuillet, who was Édith Piaf's and Maurice Chevalier's accordionist. She even gave a small concert at his home in Toulouse. In 2001, she was invited to represent Canada in Saigon and Hanoi, in Vietnam, by the ambassador, Mrs. Cécile La Tour. Sandra also opened for Jean-Pierre Ferland and Claude Dubois during the Coup de cœur francophone.
Poetry
In 2002, Sandra published her first collection of poems, Au clair de mon île, for which she was a finalist in the contest L’Acadie entre les lignes organized by Radio-Canada Atlantique. This collection will be reprinted in the winter of 2006 since the current edition is out of print. Her poem about excision was published in the journal Arcade – L’écriture au féminin, published by Éditions Arcade, Montreal (Quebec). She was also invited to read her erotic poems during the International Congress of Francophone Studies in New Orleans. She was invited to the Caraquet poetry festival in the summer of 2005 among artists like Louise Portal and Frédéric Gary Comeau.
Film
She was part of the cast of the short film Le sourire du parcomètre by Chris LeBlanc.
Theatre
She was part of the cast of Le Djibou by Laval Goupil, produced by the professional Théâtre populaire d'Acadie in Caraquet, NB.
She was also part of the all-star improvisation team for the National Improvisation tournament in Quebec, in 1995.
She took part in several television programs for ARTV, Radio-Canada, TV5, and TVA. Among the best known are Artiste dans l’âme, Le festival acadien, Cœur Batailleur with Zachary Richard, the recording of the album L’Acadie en chanson in the fall of 2004, as well as Palmarès, to name only a few. She also took part in several radio broadcasts across Canada, in Europe and in Vietnam, in English and in French.
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