Post by davidhr on Aug 23, 2011 9:44:41 GMT -5
Additional videos from several recent events became available on the web this past week, and in fact Lara’s previous accomplishments were much more in evidence, while the future remains somewhat murky.
In case you haven’t seen it, Lara Fabian’s Romanian facebook channel provided a video of Lara and Igor singing “"Les Feuilles Mortes" in rehearsal for the recently concluded ‘New Wave’ show in Latvia. It can be found at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=97tKlx0LY44
The duet is pretty much like they sang it on the televised program, indicating they were perfectly capable of performing it live, if indeed they didn’t. In addition, a newspaper article about the show noted that some of the press were present at the rehearsal, and were very impressed with how, for Lara, “even in rehearsals before an empty hall, it is not just singing, but re-living every song”. The same article noted that Igor’s learning to sing in French would be useful in a more general sense, as “not so long ago he bought a villa near Monaco, and now every summer, along with his household - his wife Olga, daughters, Victoria and Sashenka – they spend time on the Azure coast of France”.
In addition, daina.svabe made available on the Russian fan site the video shown at the recent fan meeting in Brussels. It can be found at:
www.failiem.lv/list.php?i=amkulr
(just click on the file to play or download)
As Daina notes, prominent contributions to it include a message from Dorian Sherwood (at 5:45), a message from Benoit Clemen (6:45), brief videos from Rick Allison (8:05) (in which he says he hopes to see her soon), Gregoire (8:41), Pierre-Yves Duchesne (9:45) and George Perris (11:17). A number of them refer to Lara’s passion for life, including her ‘giving it all’ on stage, echoing the comment from the news report, above. The complete list of contributing artists can be found, along with the ‘cover page’, at www.pure-lara.fr/index.php/actualites/193-lamour-de-tes-anges. The video also includes photos of Lara’s ‘angels’ – nice to see them!
Remixes of some of Lara’s older songs are being put together for an album release in 2012, presumably with Lara’s blessing (if not, Wladimir Krupsky the producer will soon learn the terms “copyright violation”). A promo for the album containing three of them (which are apparently soon to be out on a preview CD) is available at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CmGdxrq0bo
The excerpts can also be heard on ‘lastFM’. The preview CD is not yet available on sites such as amazon.com.
In a similar vein, as noted on the lara Fabian est ton autre” FB page, ‘Radio TopAwards’ which celebrates pop/rock/disco sounds apparently had a special show dedicated to Lara last Saturday night, with all her biggest hits. (The ‘remix’ form probably would have been very appropriate for this station ).
In the immediate future, there will be a 20th anniversary celebration of Bel RTL, the most-listened to radio station in the French community of Belgium. Lara along with many others will be contributing in a pre-recorded television special (recording is set for August 29th in Brussels).
The Mlle. Zhivago CD finally exited the Russian chart list (that is, dropped below #25) after some 10 months. The hope that its life would be extended by a tour this fall has already been dashed, and although the movie release is still nominally discussed for the autumn, we probably should not be holding our breath. Instead, during the ‘New Wave’ show recently, the only mention of future projects was a possible ‘trio’ concert with Lara, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sumi Jo. It’s hard to believe that Igor Krutoi would let a finished project that he clearly thinks so highly of slip away without a greater effort to maximize its visibility and sales…but equally strange things have happened in Lara’s ‘universe’.
Speaking of which, having finished their subtitling of ‘Dans l’universe de Lara Fabian’, the Romanian website for Lara has now finished putting subtitles to the (7 parts of) “Frequenstar, a TV show in France dedicated to Lara. Originally broadcast in December 1998, this was after her rapid rise, in 18 months, from an unknown to the highest peaks of French popular culture. Watching it again, knowing that from then on it would be basically all downhill for her with the French media, provides a bittersweet note. But at least one can celebrate the time when Lara was the toast of France, now comprehensible in English as well!
The site www.9larafabian.com/ , closed since last year, has just re-opened and features a live video chat for Lara’s fans (who become members). It lists French and English as its available languages. On choosing English, with the automatic call to Google translator, a (slighty imperfect) English version of the introduction shows up. It remains to be seen how much English is used in the ‘live chat’. In any case, good luck to them.
We’ve now almost caught up to the present time in the ‘biography of Lara’, so the topics of discussion are fairly familiar to us. Chapter 19 is concerned initially with ‘Toutes les femmes en moi’. On pp. 197-201, the author basically reviews Lara’s reasons for paying homage to the particular singers she has chosen, derived from her liner notes or conversations in the press.
**Lara described the idea for this album as arising from a conversation with her friend Nathalie, where they batted around the concept of how people get to be the way they are, other than genetics or formal education. Lara says it occurred to her that she was largely ‘built’ by the woman singers with whom she identified, in one way or another. She then decided to pay homage to them before her landmark 40th birthday.
**Actually, the book points out that in an interview in 1999 Lara actually had a somewhat similar idea, saying that she would like to do an album of reprises some day dedicated to her preferred songs, “15 or 20 songs with a mixture of cultures”, from both the Francophile and anglophile worlds. However, the names she mentioned then were predominantly male (Brel, Lama, Aznjavour, Sardou, Berger, Goldman, Gershwin, Gary Moore, …). So while this was not a direct antecedent to what eventually appeared, the germ of bringing her favored works together, if not necessarily her most important role models, had been simmering for a decade. [At this point it is hard to resist repeating Lara’s joke that she probably would not do an album of male singers entitled “All the Men in Me”…]
**The women were more important to her anyway, given that she was raised by a family with generations of strong women, and where there were more girls than boys. The women in these songs permitted her “to keep hope, even when it was difficult, a little like a beacon in the darkness”.
**As to the reason for each of the artists, these are familiar to us: Nana Mouskouri her first favorite derived from her mother’s preference, Veronique Sanson for the poetry of her lyrics, Maurane for her resilience, Dalida for her impeccability, Barbara for her compassion, Edith Piaf for her strength, Diane Dufresne for her clarity of vision and craziness, Celine Dion for her vocal dexterity, France Gall who helped Lara pass gym in school when she used “Babacar” as her accompaniment (and beat out all the other contestants, who had ‘settled’ for Chopin, Mozart,…)
**Then there were those whose lives touched Lara personally: Catherine Lara, who not only helped Lara when things went wrong on a TV show, but met with her before the TV cameras when the album was being publicized; Ginette Reno for the Quebec connection (whose last album in 2010 coincidentally had butterflies on it, like Lara’s “Nue”); and especially Francoise Hardy who Lara has often indicated “saved her life” with a ‘personal message’ that passed between them, one evening during the time when Lara’s personal and professional lives were hitting bottom.
**As to her own song on the album, Lara noted that she was ‘modestly’ making a statement about the place of women in society with “Toutes les femmes en moi”, but that she didn’t want it to be too ‘heavy’ – hence her inclusion of the “humorous lyric about God being a woman”.
And in this slow news cycle, now may be as good a time as any to report that I accidentally happened to come upon an article concerned with Lara’s astrological chart . It can be found at:
www.astrotheme.com/portraits/64dQChDpyCt9.htm
and it fits her to a tee! If Lara were to read it, she would have no doubt as to what influence, other than genetics and education, ‘constructed her’! [Being a star herself, it’s only fitting that the other stars help guide her… ] To increase the likelihood that she will actually see it (if she hasn’t already), I added it to her FB discussion section.
This coming week, the last full week in August, Lara will presumably need to be back in Belgium, if she was indeed away, to be present at the recording of the anniversary show for Bel RTL. After that ‘Le Retour’ will feature at least some level of preparation for her September concert in Belgium. So, for her, summer vacation is probably over, but for everyone else to whom it applies, happy last full week of R&R.
David
In case you haven’t seen it, Lara Fabian’s Romanian facebook channel provided a video of Lara and Igor singing “"Les Feuilles Mortes" in rehearsal for the recently concluded ‘New Wave’ show in Latvia. It can be found at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=97tKlx0LY44
The duet is pretty much like they sang it on the televised program, indicating they were perfectly capable of performing it live, if indeed they didn’t. In addition, a newspaper article about the show noted that some of the press were present at the rehearsal, and were very impressed with how, for Lara, “even in rehearsals before an empty hall, it is not just singing, but re-living every song”. The same article noted that Igor’s learning to sing in French would be useful in a more general sense, as “not so long ago he bought a villa near Monaco, and now every summer, along with his household - his wife Olga, daughters, Victoria and Sashenka – they spend time on the Azure coast of France”.
In addition, daina.svabe made available on the Russian fan site the video shown at the recent fan meeting in Brussels. It can be found at:
www.failiem.lv/list.php?i=amkulr
(just click on the file to play or download)
As Daina notes, prominent contributions to it include a message from Dorian Sherwood (at 5:45), a message from Benoit Clemen (6:45), brief videos from Rick Allison (8:05) (in which he says he hopes to see her soon), Gregoire (8:41), Pierre-Yves Duchesne (9:45) and George Perris (11:17). A number of them refer to Lara’s passion for life, including her ‘giving it all’ on stage, echoing the comment from the news report, above. The complete list of contributing artists can be found, along with the ‘cover page’, at www.pure-lara.fr/index.php/actualites/193-lamour-de-tes-anges. The video also includes photos of Lara’s ‘angels’ – nice to see them!
Remixes of some of Lara’s older songs are being put together for an album release in 2012, presumably with Lara’s blessing (if not, Wladimir Krupsky the producer will soon learn the terms “copyright violation”). A promo for the album containing three of them (which are apparently soon to be out on a preview CD) is available at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CmGdxrq0bo
The excerpts can also be heard on ‘lastFM’. The preview CD is not yet available on sites such as amazon.com.
In a similar vein, as noted on the lara Fabian est ton autre” FB page, ‘Radio TopAwards’ which celebrates pop/rock/disco sounds apparently had a special show dedicated to Lara last Saturday night, with all her biggest hits. (The ‘remix’ form probably would have been very appropriate for this station ).
In the immediate future, there will be a 20th anniversary celebration of Bel RTL, the most-listened to radio station in the French community of Belgium. Lara along with many others will be contributing in a pre-recorded television special (recording is set for August 29th in Brussels).
The Mlle. Zhivago CD finally exited the Russian chart list (that is, dropped below #25) after some 10 months. The hope that its life would be extended by a tour this fall has already been dashed, and although the movie release is still nominally discussed for the autumn, we probably should not be holding our breath. Instead, during the ‘New Wave’ show recently, the only mention of future projects was a possible ‘trio’ concert with Lara, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sumi Jo. It’s hard to believe that Igor Krutoi would let a finished project that he clearly thinks so highly of slip away without a greater effort to maximize its visibility and sales…but equally strange things have happened in Lara’s ‘universe’.
Speaking of which, having finished their subtitling of ‘Dans l’universe de Lara Fabian’, the Romanian website for Lara has now finished putting subtitles to the (7 parts of) “Frequenstar, a TV show in France dedicated to Lara. Originally broadcast in December 1998, this was after her rapid rise, in 18 months, from an unknown to the highest peaks of French popular culture. Watching it again, knowing that from then on it would be basically all downhill for her with the French media, provides a bittersweet note. But at least one can celebrate the time when Lara was the toast of France, now comprehensible in English as well!
The site www.9larafabian.com/ , closed since last year, has just re-opened and features a live video chat for Lara’s fans (who become members). It lists French and English as its available languages. On choosing English, with the automatic call to Google translator, a (slighty imperfect) English version of the introduction shows up. It remains to be seen how much English is used in the ‘live chat’. In any case, good luck to them.
We’ve now almost caught up to the present time in the ‘biography of Lara’, so the topics of discussion are fairly familiar to us. Chapter 19 is concerned initially with ‘Toutes les femmes en moi’. On pp. 197-201, the author basically reviews Lara’s reasons for paying homage to the particular singers she has chosen, derived from her liner notes or conversations in the press.
**Lara described the idea for this album as arising from a conversation with her friend Nathalie, where they batted around the concept of how people get to be the way they are, other than genetics or formal education. Lara says it occurred to her that she was largely ‘built’ by the woman singers with whom she identified, in one way or another. She then decided to pay homage to them before her landmark 40th birthday.
**Actually, the book points out that in an interview in 1999 Lara actually had a somewhat similar idea, saying that she would like to do an album of reprises some day dedicated to her preferred songs, “15 or 20 songs with a mixture of cultures”, from both the Francophile and anglophile worlds. However, the names she mentioned then were predominantly male (Brel, Lama, Aznjavour, Sardou, Berger, Goldman, Gershwin, Gary Moore, …). So while this was not a direct antecedent to what eventually appeared, the germ of bringing her favored works together, if not necessarily her most important role models, had been simmering for a decade. [At this point it is hard to resist repeating Lara’s joke that she probably would not do an album of male singers entitled “All the Men in Me”…]
**The women were more important to her anyway, given that she was raised by a family with generations of strong women, and where there were more girls than boys. The women in these songs permitted her “to keep hope, even when it was difficult, a little like a beacon in the darkness”.
**As to the reason for each of the artists, these are familiar to us: Nana Mouskouri her first favorite derived from her mother’s preference, Veronique Sanson for the poetry of her lyrics, Maurane for her resilience, Dalida for her impeccability, Barbara for her compassion, Edith Piaf for her strength, Diane Dufresne for her clarity of vision and craziness, Celine Dion for her vocal dexterity, France Gall who helped Lara pass gym in school when she used “Babacar” as her accompaniment (and beat out all the other contestants, who had ‘settled’ for Chopin, Mozart,…)
**Then there were those whose lives touched Lara personally: Catherine Lara, who not only helped Lara when things went wrong on a TV show, but met with her before the TV cameras when the album was being publicized; Ginette Reno for the Quebec connection (whose last album in 2010 coincidentally had butterflies on it, like Lara’s “Nue”); and especially Francoise Hardy who Lara has often indicated “saved her life” with a ‘personal message’ that passed between them, one evening during the time when Lara’s personal and professional lives were hitting bottom.
**As to her own song on the album, Lara noted that she was ‘modestly’ making a statement about the place of women in society with “Toutes les femmes en moi”, but that she didn’t want it to be too ‘heavy’ – hence her inclusion of the “humorous lyric about God being a woman”.
And in this slow news cycle, now may be as good a time as any to report that I accidentally happened to come upon an article concerned with Lara’s astrological chart . It can be found at:
www.astrotheme.com/portraits/64dQChDpyCt9.htm
and it fits her to a tee! If Lara were to read it, she would have no doubt as to what influence, other than genetics and education, ‘constructed her’! [Being a star herself, it’s only fitting that the other stars help guide her… ] To increase the likelihood that she will actually see it (if she hasn’t already), I added it to her FB discussion section.
This coming week, the last full week in August, Lara will presumably need to be back in Belgium, if she was indeed away, to be present at the recording of the anniversary show for Bel RTL. After that ‘Le Retour’ will feature at least some level of preparation for her September concert in Belgium. So, for her, summer vacation is probably over, but for everyone else to whom it applies, happy last full week of R&R.
David