Post by davidhr on Jan 25, 2011 10:09:02 GMT -5
Varied news items arose those past week, generally presaging events to come.
As Ocelot mentioned in response to the last news update, a new ‘word from Lara’ appeared on her website, the first in about six months. There were only two last year, the first again being in January. Lara’s explicitly mentioned reason for it was to maintain a link with her fans – so far only the French fans, as there is no English version given, although it may yet come, as the last message was eventually translated on the site. However, one doesn’t have to wait since larafabiannews.com has already provided it on that website.
Take home points from the message that are relevant here include:
**Lara will be focusing on presenting the Mlle. Zhivago album around the world, with concert dates being currently set up. There’s hope therefore that she will actually present a real concert in English speaking countries.
**Lara confirmed that her participation in Beijing for the Chinese New Year festivities will be televised (the New Year occurs on February 3). She will also open the Asian winter games (not the winter Olympics as she mentioned) at the end of January in Astana, which is the capital and second largest city in Kazakhstan. Obviously these activities are the beginning of her ‘round the world’ comment, even though the songs she sang in Beijing on the video available were not from the Mlle. Zhivago album. At least she is getting her name out there.
**She indicated that the Mlle. Zhivago movie will be released in April, and implies that it will be available in France at that time as well. She does not say that the Mlle. Zhivago album will be released there, however. She seems quite happy at the reception the album is getting in Russia and the Ukraine, and we’ve heard that she is uncertain whether that will be replicated in France, hence the hesitation.
**After her Asian appearance, she “will go to New York for a long while to prepare more music”. Since it would be illogical to do this for a new French album, it suggests the rumor about a new English language album (with Igor Krutoi) seems valid.
**A virtual version of ‘Farfallina’ is in the works, with more to be explained in later ‘words from Lara’. Hopefully that will not take another six months.
**Lara has moved to a new house in Belgium.
We have learned not to take even Lara’s comments concerning future plans as carved in stone (remember her comment several years ago in Farfallina that she was recording a new album in Los Angeles?). Nevertheless, this focus on her international career is all for the good, as far as this audience is concerned. French/Belgian fans have taken some solace in a ‘pitiblog’ article indicating that Lara will have a new French album available toward the end of 2011. Even they admit that is still in the planning stage, and nothing concrete has yet been set in place.
On more solid ground for future activities is the report Ocelot referred to that Lara is one of the invitees to sing at Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday party in London. Not only is this an honor, likely related to her current popularity in Russia, but the advertisement for the event which features numerous prominent personalities shows Lara prominently:
www.gorby80.com/events.html
and
en.rian.ru/art_living/20110120/162225148.html
The first article lists her as ‘international singer’. This does seem to be becoming more and more her persona (as opposed to ‘French singer’ which was the moniker associated with her at the ‘DeLovely’ publicity events). The event will take place at The London Royal Albert Hall on March 30 (you may remember Lara joined Mario Frangoulis there for a concert in 2009).
Of a similar nature, as first mentioned by David on another thread on this site, the David Foster special Lara attended last year will be released as a CD/DVD entitled “The Hitman Returns: David Foster & Friends” on March 1st. It will be shown simultaneously on PBS ‘Great Performances’ through early March. The real question here, of course, is whether Lara’s performance(s) will have made the cut be on the program. The article about it appears at:
www.live-pr.com/en/the-hitman-returns-david-foster-amp-r1048706381.htm
Lara is one of the artists listed in this report, although not mentioned by Foster himself.
Returning to Lara’s French career, the pitiblog article referred to above is primarily about the release of Lara’s next single from the ‘best of’ release, which is the virtual duo with Ray Charles of the song ‘Ensemble’. The first single has gotten some airplay, and this one probably will too. It is also relevant for the re-release of the album (as a single CD) at the end of February. In association with all of this, Lara reportedly will be on the program ‘On Repeint la Musique’ on France Bleu this coming Sunday, a show that has already been recorded. BTW, if one wants to see what the cover of the first single was, ‘Nicolasleroy’ on the official site forum provided a link to it:
www.illogicall-music.fr/fr/artistes/on-s-aimerait-tout-bas-cd-1-titre-lara-fabian.html
The fact that Lara had indicated she was willing to participate in the French version of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ stirred up a hornet’s nest of opinions on the official site forum, with some fans thinking it would be the official burial of her career as an ‘artist’, while others thinking it would be good fun and get her to be known by a larger segment of the French audience. The conclusion noted last week that she was not, after all, to be one of the participants may have been premature – the participants listed in ‘purepeople’ apparently only covered the first guests. It has been reported that the full list will be made available tomorrow. We don’t get too many opportunities to see Lara really dance, so I, for one, would be happy if she were chosen.
Concerning Lara’s current sales: The ‘best of’ has dropped 3 places and is currently 18th on the list of top compilations in France, while it has fallen out of the top 100 album charts. The DVD is 36th, a loss of 19 places. While the ‘best of’ package was helped by the presence of the DVD, the stand-alone DVD sales have been hurt, as many people bought it in the special ‘best of’ package. In Belgium, the ‘best of’ remains in 5th place. Nothing new is available concerning the Russian charts.
With respect to the biography of Lara, here are interesting points from pp. 21-25:
**Marc Lerchs was brought a cassette of Lara singing ‘New York, New York’ at a birthday party when she was 15 – that started their collaboration. He wrote for her 8 songs, and they, and Pierre, went around together playing cabarets (Marc as the regular pianist).
**Lara also entered singing contests, regularly winning them, and her winning of the ‘Festival of Waloonia at the age of 16 led to her prize, the free recording of a 45 record. Side A was ‘L’aziza est en pleurs’ and side B was ‘Il y avait’. 500 copies were made.
**”L’aziza est en pleurs” was written in response to the death of the French singer and songwriter Daniel Balavoine who was killed in a helicopter crash at the Paris-Dakar motor rally in 1986. Lara thought of him as a role model for her career – a strong, emotional singer, who “lived his life without compromise, having always made his choice by rapport with his integrity and not in regard to people...Also, he was profoundly generous…” (Lara’s words). [He used his fame to build water wells for people in the Sahel].
** These songs, plus ‘Nuit Blanches” (which Lerch also wrote) were Lara’s first recordings to be played on the radio, on RTBF in Belgium. Among his other songs for Lara were ‘Ces oiseaux la’, Si demaine’, and ‘Lettre anonyme’.
**The recordings were done after hours at RTBF by a technician who lent them the keys to the studio (and thus received ‘engineer’ credit on them). The saxophone part on ‘Il y avait’ was contributed by Steven Brown, who the same evening, while drunk, also recorded an improvised instrumental version of it that became its own record, known as “By Night”. It was reprised by the Belgian jazzman Steve Houben, accompanied by a symphonic orchestra, and played on the show that marked the launching of the euro in Brussels, in December 2002. The show itself was conceived by Marc Lerchs in his job as organizer of institutional publicity events in Belgium. It was televised around the world. So the song that was composed initially for a young Lara 15 years later was given international prominence as an instrumental.
This coming week Lara will be in Asia for the winter games. We should get used to hearing about these far-flung ventures. Even though Lara has begun discussing them in her message, it is too much to hope that the official site itself will be of much help, so to find out about Lara in unexpected places may well require even greater ingenuity on the part of her fans.
David
As Ocelot mentioned in response to the last news update, a new ‘word from Lara’ appeared on her website, the first in about six months. There were only two last year, the first again being in January. Lara’s explicitly mentioned reason for it was to maintain a link with her fans – so far only the French fans, as there is no English version given, although it may yet come, as the last message was eventually translated on the site. However, one doesn’t have to wait since larafabiannews.com has already provided it on that website.
Take home points from the message that are relevant here include:
**Lara will be focusing on presenting the Mlle. Zhivago album around the world, with concert dates being currently set up. There’s hope therefore that she will actually present a real concert in English speaking countries.
**Lara confirmed that her participation in Beijing for the Chinese New Year festivities will be televised (the New Year occurs on February 3). She will also open the Asian winter games (not the winter Olympics as she mentioned) at the end of January in Astana, which is the capital and second largest city in Kazakhstan. Obviously these activities are the beginning of her ‘round the world’ comment, even though the songs she sang in Beijing on the video available were not from the Mlle. Zhivago album. At least she is getting her name out there.
**She indicated that the Mlle. Zhivago movie will be released in April, and implies that it will be available in France at that time as well. She does not say that the Mlle. Zhivago album will be released there, however. She seems quite happy at the reception the album is getting in Russia and the Ukraine, and we’ve heard that she is uncertain whether that will be replicated in France, hence the hesitation.
**After her Asian appearance, she “will go to New York for a long while to prepare more music”. Since it would be illogical to do this for a new French album, it suggests the rumor about a new English language album (with Igor Krutoi) seems valid.
**A virtual version of ‘Farfallina’ is in the works, with more to be explained in later ‘words from Lara’. Hopefully that will not take another six months.
**Lara has moved to a new house in Belgium.
We have learned not to take even Lara’s comments concerning future plans as carved in stone (remember her comment several years ago in Farfallina that she was recording a new album in Los Angeles?). Nevertheless, this focus on her international career is all for the good, as far as this audience is concerned. French/Belgian fans have taken some solace in a ‘pitiblog’ article indicating that Lara will have a new French album available toward the end of 2011. Even they admit that is still in the planning stage, and nothing concrete has yet been set in place.
On more solid ground for future activities is the report Ocelot referred to that Lara is one of the invitees to sing at Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday party in London. Not only is this an honor, likely related to her current popularity in Russia, but the advertisement for the event which features numerous prominent personalities shows Lara prominently:
www.gorby80.com/events.html
and
en.rian.ru/art_living/20110120/162225148.html
The first article lists her as ‘international singer’. This does seem to be becoming more and more her persona (as opposed to ‘French singer’ which was the moniker associated with her at the ‘DeLovely’ publicity events). The event will take place at The London Royal Albert Hall on March 30 (you may remember Lara joined Mario Frangoulis there for a concert in 2009).
Of a similar nature, as first mentioned by David on another thread on this site, the David Foster special Lara attended last year will be released as a CD/DVD entitled “The Hitman Returns: David Foster & Friends” on March 1st. It will be shown simultaneously on PBS ‘Great Performances’ through early March. The real question here, of course, is whether Lara’s performance(s) will have made the cut be on the program. The article about it appears at:
www.live-pr.com/en/the-hitman-returns-david-foster-amp-r1048706381.htm
Lara is one of the artists listed in this report, although not mentioned by Foster himself.
Returning to Lara’s French career, the pitiblog article referred to above is primarily about the release of Lara’s next single from the ‘best of’ release, which is the virtual duo with Ray Charles of the song ‘Ensemble’. The first single has gotten some airplay, and this one probably will too. It is also relevant for the re-release of the album (as a single CD) at the end of February. In association with all of this, Lara reportedly will be on the program ‘On Repeint la Musique’ on France Bleu this coming Sunday, a show that has already been recorded. BTW, if one wants to see what the cover of the first single was, ‘Nicolasleroy’ on the official site forum provided a link to it:
www.illogicall-music.fr/fr/artistes/on-s-aimerait-tout-bas-cd-1-titre-lara-fabian.html
The fact that Lara had indicated she was willing to participate in the French version of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ stirred up a hornet’s nest of opinions on the official site forum, with some fans thinking it would be the official burial of her career as an ‘artist’, while others thinking it would be good fun and get her to be known by a larger segment of the French audience. The conclusion noted last week that she was not, after all, to be one of the participants may have been premature – the participants listed in ‘purepeople’ apparently only covered the first guests. It has been reported that the full list will be made available tomorrow. We don’t get too many opportunities to see Lara really dance, so I, for one, would be happy if she were chosen.
Concerning Lara’s current sales: The ‘best of’ has dropped 3 places and is currently 18th on the list of top compilations in France, while it has fallen out of the top 100 album charts. The DVD is 36th, a loss of 19 places. While the ‘best of’ package was helped by the presence of the DVD, the stand-alone DVD sales have been hurt, as many people bought it in the special ‘best of’ package. In Belgium, the ‘best of’ remains in 5th place. Nothing new is available concerning the Russian charts.
With respect to the biography of Lara, here are interesting points from pp. 21-25:
**Marc Lerchs was brought a cassette of Lara singing ‘New York, New York’ at a birthday party when she was 15 – that started their collaboration. He wrote for her 8 songs, and they, and Pierre, went around together playing cabarets (Marc as the regular pianist).
**Lara also entered singing contests, regularly winning them, and her winning of the ‘Festival of Waloonia at the age of 16 led to her prize, the free recording of a 45 record. Side A was ‘L’aziza est en pleurs’ and side B was ‘Il y avait’. 500 copies were made.
**”L’aziza est en pleurs” was written in response to the death of the French singer and songwriter Daniel Balavoine who was killed in a helicopter crash at the Paris-Dakar motor rally in 1986. Lara thought of him as a role model for her career – a strong, emotional singer, who “lived his life without compromise, having always made his choice by rapport with his integrity and not in regard to people...Also, he was profoundly generous…” (Lara’s words). [He used his fame to build water wells for people in the Sahel].
** These songs, plus ‘Nuit Blanches” (which Lerch also wrote) were Lara’s first recordings to be played on the radio, on RTBF in Belgium. Among his other songs for Lara were ‘Ces oiseaux la’, Si demaine’, and ‘Lettre anonyme’.
**The recordings were done after hours at RTBF by a technician who lent them the keys to the studio (and thus received ‘engineer’ credit on them). The saxophone part on ‘Il y avait’ was contributed by Steven Brown, who the same evening, while drunk, also recorded an improvised instrumental version of it that became its own record, known as “By Night”. It was reprised by the Belgian jazzman Steve Houben, accompanied by a symphonic orchestra, and played on the show that marked the launching of the euro in Brussels, in December 2002. The show itself was conceived by Marc Lerchs in his job as organizer of institutional publicity events in Belgium. It was televised around the world. So the song that was composed initially for a young Lara 15 years later was given international prominence as an instrumental.
This coming week Lara will be in Asia for the winter games. We should get used to hearing about these far-flung ventures. Even though Lara has begun discussing them in her message, it is too much to hope that the official site itself will be of much help, so to find out about Lara in unexpected places may well require even greater ingenuity on the part of her fans.
David
