Post by davidhr on Nov 11, 2014 9:06:20 GMT -5
Lara’s week had a strong North American slant to it, without her actually being there.
First, Lara’s duet with Joel Legendre, on a new album “Joel Legendre Christmas” was released in Canada on November 4th. Lara’s song is a French version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, which became ‘Douces Nuits de Noël’ (‘Silent nights of Christmas’). It can be heard at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9yQ0VliFDs
while the album itself can be purchased at
www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=Noel+Joel+Legendre&rh=n%3A916514%2Ck%3ANoel+Joel+Legendre
In this case, the voices are well-matched, and it reminds us that Lara could well produce a Christmas album herself, she has the perfect voice for it.
This is the fifth new song, and the third duet, released in the last several weeks, following ‘On se retrouvera’, the duet with Yoann Fréget and ‘Une femme avec une femme’ both for the ‘’Les enfants du Top 50“ album; ‘Parler d’amour’ with Michel Jonasz for the album ‘Kiss and Love’ celebrating 20 years of the fight against AIDs; and ‘Lubov ustavshikh lebedey’ (Love of Tired Swans with the music of Je t'aime encore) in Russia. [And then of course there was the summertime release of ‘Make Me Yours Tonight’]. Obviously they all had different auspices, and to some extent their appearance at approximately the same time is a coincidence, but it is indicative of Lara’s burst of activity following her medically-imposed nine month isolation.
Then, Lara announced on her FB site some of the venues for her upcoming spring tour, with the latter part of March, at least, being dedicated to North America. Here are the locations given so far.
March 26 - Toronto - Queen Elizabeth Theatre
March 28 – Holywood, Florida, Hard Rock Live
March 31 - Los Angeles, Saban Theater
April 20 - Stockholm, Sweden, Circus Arena
April 22 - Tallinn, Estonia, Nordea Hall
April 24 - Helsinki, Finland Talo
April 26 - Tampere, Tampere Talo
And of course there’s the January 31st gala for Igor Krutoi in Brooklyn, N.Y. where Lara will join a number of other singers. A promo for that can be seen at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCRLjgD8ktI
with Lara appearing at the ~17 second mark.
It was indicated that other concert sites are likely to be added. Presumably that includes at least some dates in South America, Brazil in particular, which Lara has previously indicated.
Her website doesn’t yet indicate that tickets are available for the newly listed shows, but they are for the concert in Hollywood, Florida, at:
www.songkick.com/concerts/22149058-lara-fabian-at-hard-rock-live
Tickets are also available for the show in Helsinki, Finland, at:
www.lippu.fi/Lippuja.html?affiliate=ADV&doc=artistPages%2Ftickets&fun=artist&action=tickets&erid=1286949&includeOnlybookable=true&xtmc=lara_fabian&xtnp=1&xtcr=2
There has to be a story behind her choice Hollywood, Florida which is the 12th largest city in that state, having a population of some 140,000 people (according to Wikipedia). Who would have thought that in what appears so far to be an abbreviated North American tour, Lara would have gone to Florida, much less to that city? There are some 3000 French speakers in Miami, so that would border on being understandable. Maybe one day we’ll find out what is going on, perhaps at that concert itself. And maybe it will turn out that Lara has a much more extensive tour planned for the U.S., of which Hollywood, Fla. is just one out-of-the-way place; even so, this location defies all analysis
. One also wonders whether this time she will actually sing in English in Toronto .
It is again interesting that Lara would have this tour included on her official site, but not her performances in Moscow this coming weekend (https://www.facebook.com/353946178085395/photos/a.353949311418415.1073741826.353946178085395/565746530238691/?type=1&theater), or the full concert appearances in far Eastern Europe/ Western Asia, the week after in Baku, Azerbaijan (https://www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/748844478502552/?type=1&theater) and in Moldavia on December 9th (https://www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/749741145079552/?type=1&theater). She even prepared a short video promo for Baku (http://www.video.az/ru/video/117553/lara-fabian-salam-baku; or www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuhRNvRoXp8) but did not link it to her website. Does she fear that some of these places are currently ‘politically incorrect’, and so does not want to call attention to them in the west? Perhaps, but as noted previously, she has generally avoided listing these locales on her FB site.
Alternatively, in the past we wondered whether she was reluctant to alienate her core French supporters by emphasizing other places she was going – but giving the North American tour such prominence so early would belie that assumption. In any event, if that is part of her goal, it did not succeed. There were many, many comments on Lara’s FB page in response to this announcement, and a number of them castigated her for not coming to France to make up for her cancelled tour appearances of earlier this year. [These are probably the angriest messages I can remember fans posting on Lara’s own site, although some French fans did support her]. Along with the complaints about Lara speaking primarily English at her recent concerts in Europe, Lara is now faced squarely with a problem she has tried for years to solve: how to expand her audience without appearing to slight her Francophone core. If there really is a new French album released in 2015, perhaps a French/Belgian tour will take place later in the year, or early 2016.
Another question that arose was whether this would be a continuation of her ‘best of’ tour, or in support of a new English (or even French) album. It was reported that when fans asked concert organizers in Helsinki this question, given the just concluded ‘best of’ concert there, they were told it would be new songs. We’ll see whether that refers to new album(s).
And there is still the question of how this can be consistent with the release of a new French album in April, without, apparently, much on-the-ground promotion…
Lara’s tours are being organized by a professional company, as stated at:
www.prg.com/about-us/projects-showcase/prg-supports-lara-fabian-tour/
Here’s their press release:
----------------------------------------
October 2014
PRG EML Productions is delighted to accompany Belgian-Canadian singer Lara Fabian on an intimate tour that will take her through Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Slovakia and the USA.
Pierre Sarazin, Lara Fabian’s Manager, has chosen to work with PRG EML on this tour, stating:
“What defined my choice is the people I get to work with. The fixtures are mostly available everywhere in the market. There is always a lot of pressure in this business, a lot of things to do last minute and it’s important to me to work with people I share a certain loyalty and intellectual bond with. We must be able to keep the magic of the show, throughout some times hard moments but always find solutions together. In the past months, I’ve installed a brand new team around Lara. My goal is to keep this team, grow together and give a stable environment to Lara, both technically and humanly. Before each show I want everything to be perfect so that Lara doesn’t have to care about anything [other] than the songs. Later, when Lara will be back on bigger stages and other areas, I know I will be able to count on PRG as a worldwide group. I can definitely use the PRG network and rely on the support of other subsidiaries in France, USA, Brazil and so on.“
-------------------------------------------
It’s interesting that Lara also has a manager. For some time, she had been organizing her tours and taking care of her career herself. It was suggested in many quarters that she should rely on professionals, and that now seems to be the case – perhaps explaining her current outreach.
After all these places Lara will be, there are several places she was not. It was noted a few months ago that Lara had become a member of the association ‘L’enfant des Etoiles’, and in their press release they had indicated if she were available, she would join them for their production of “Maire’ on November 7th, in fact singing with them on stage for the final song (https://www.facebook.com/events/1435607786682195/). ‘Geo Faucon’ on the ‘Lara Fabian Web’ FB site indicated that Lara was not there. For her to miss it is somewhat surprising…
In the same vein, Rozenn Roz on the MZ FB site noted that the television production ‘The evening of Sidaction’, on November 16 17, would not include Lara. The listing of performers is otherwise a ‘whose who’ of French entertainers, as can be seen at:
www.emissions-TV.com/emissions/57/la_soiree_du_sidaction
Michel Jonasz, Lara’s duet partner will not be there either. In this case, Lara’s appearances in Moscow on the 15th and 16th are probably the reason for her absence, but it’s too bad, because it would have been an opportunity to counter some of the bad feelings building up among her Francophone fans.
In other news, a new group called "l’Ange de ses anges" has been organized. They describe themselves as “part of the great and beautiful family that gathers around Lara”. You can find their site at:
www.facebook.com/groups/1488347651450720/
Good luck to them. At this point in time, Lara needs all the French support she can get!
In case you’ve forgotten about it, ‘Make Me Yours Tonight’ is still around on the Turkish charts, having made it back to #4, after ~13 weeks in the Top 10 www.facebook.com/lapagedesfabianesk/photos/a.562919410434845.1073741837.501577866569000/778858358840948/?type=1&theater. And speaking of charts, the compilation ’30 years of the Top 50’, with Lara’s contributions, debuted at #1 in France. One imagines ‘Kiss and Love’ will do very well also when it has been out long enough to register (it was released November 3). We still have not seen the release of the ‘Best of’ album that ‘Odacity’ was preparing ‘for the fall’, obviously now too late for most of her tour.
The Lara Fabian PHQ site posted a beautiful picture of Lara; it can be seen at:
www.facebook.com/353946178085395/photos/a.353954938084519.1073741828.353946178085395/567283410085003/?type=1&theater
as did ‘Lara Fabian Mexico’, at: www.facebook.com/LaraFabianfromMexico/photos/a.556367684417296.1073741826.556364357750962/750256915028371/?type=1&theater
Lara will soon be leaving for her appearances in Moscow this weekend, if she is not there already (perhaps one reason for missing the ‘Maire’ performance). Given her schedule, she may well stay in the ‘countries to the east’ for the next several weeks. As we don’t necessarily expect her FB site to keep us informed, fans will have to do it! Meanwhile, we’ll see if there are any attempts on the part of Lara’s ‘people’ to calm the inflamed nerves of her French-speaking audience.
David
First, Lara’s duet with Joel Legendre, on a new album “Joel Legendre Christmas” was released in Canada on November 4th. Lara’s song is a French version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, which became ‘Douces Nuits de Noël’ (‘Silent nights of Christmas’). It can be heard at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9yQ0VliFDs
while the album itself can be purchased at
www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=Noel+Joel+Legendre&rh=n%3A916514%2Ck%3ANoel+Joel+Legendre
In this case, the voices are well-matched, and it reminds us that Lara could well produce a Christmas album herself, she has the perfect voice for it.
This is the fifth new song, and the third duet, released in the last several weeks, following ‘On se retrouvera’, the duet with Yoann Fréget and ‘Une femme avec une femme’ both for the ‘’Les enfants du Top 50“ album; ‘Parler d’amour’ with Michel Jonasz for the album ‘Kiss and Love’ celebrating 20 years of the fight against AIDs; and ‘Lubov ustavshikh lebedey’ (Love of Tired Swans with the music of Je t'aime encore) in Russia. [And then of course there was the summertime release of ‘Make Me Yours Tonight’]. Obviously they all had different auspices, and to some extent their appearance at approximately the same time is a coincidence, but it is indicative of Lara’s burst of activity following her medically-imposed nine month isolation.
Then, Lara announced on her FB site some of the venues for her upcoming spring tour, with the latter part of March, at least, being dedicated to North America. Here are the locations given so far.
March 26 - Toronto - Queen Elizabeth Theatre
March 28 – Holywood, Florida, Hard Rock Live
March 31 - Los Angeles, Saban Theater
April 20 - Stockholm, Sweden, Circus Arena
April 22 - Tallinn, Estonia, Nordea Hall
April 24 - Helsinki, Finland Talo
April 26 - Tampere, Tampere Talo
And of course there’s the January 31st gala for Igor Krutoi in Brooklyn, N.Y. where Lara will join a number of other singers. A promo for that can be seen at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCRLjgD8ktI
with Lara appearing at the ~17 second mark.
It was indicated that other concert sites are likely to be added. Presumably that includes at least some dates in South America, Brazil in particular, which Lara has previously indicated.
Her website doesn’t yet indicate that tickets are available for the newly listed shows, but they are for the concert in Hollywood, Florida, at:
www.songkick.com/concerts/22149058-lara-fabian-at-hard-rock-live
Tickets are also available for the show in Helsinki, Finland, at:
www.lippu.fi/Lippuja.html?affiliate=ADV&doc=artistPages%2Ftickets&fun=artist&action=tickets&erid=1286949&includeOnlybookable=true&xtmc=lara_fabian&xtnp=1&xtcr=2
There has to be a story behind her choice Hollywood, Florida which is the 12th largest city in that state, having a population of some 140,000 people (according to Wikipedia). Who would have thought that in what appears so far to be an abbreviated North American tour, Lara would have gone to Florida, much less to that city? There are some 3000 French speakers in Miami, so that would border on being understandable. Maybe one day we’ll find out what is going on, perhaps at that concert itself. And maybe it will turn out that Lara has a much more extensive tour planned for the U.S., of which Hollywood, Fla. is just one out-of-the-way place; even so, this location defies all analysis
. One also wonders whether this time she will actually sing in English in Toronto .It is again interesting that Lara would have this tour included on her official site, but not her performances in Moscow this coming weekend (https://www.facebook.com/353946178085395/photos/a.353949311418415.1073741826.353946178085395/565746530238691/?type=1&theater), or the full concert appearances in far Eastern Europe/ Western Asia, the week after in Baku, Azerbaijan (https://www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/748844478502552/?type=1&theater) and in Moldavia on December 9th (https://www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/749741145079552/?type=1&theater). She even prepared a short video promo for Baku (http://www.video.az/ru/video/117553/lara-fabian-salam-baku; or www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuhRNvRoXp8) but did not link it to her website. Does she fear that some of these places are currently ‘politically incorrect’, and so does not want to call attention to them in the west? Perhaps, but as noted previously, she has generally avoided listing these locales on her FB site.
Alternatively, in the past we wondered whether she was reluctant to alienate her core French supporters by emphasizing other places she was going – but giving the North American tour such prominence so early would belie that assumption. In any event, if that is part of her goal, it did not succeed. There were many, many comments on Lara’s FB page in response to this announcement, and a number of them castigated her for not coming to France to make up for her cancelled tour appearances of earlier this year. [These are probably the angriest messages I can remember fans posting on Lara’s own site, although some French fans did support her]. Along with the complaints about Lara speaking primarily English at her recent concerts in Europe, Lara is now faced squarely with a problem she has tried for years to solve: how to expand her audience without appearing to slight her Francophone core. If there really is a new French album released in 2015, perhaps a French/Belgian tour will take place later in the year, or early 2016.
Another question that arose was whether this would be a continuation of her ‘best of’ tour, or in support of a new English (or even French) album. It was reported that when fans asked concert organizers in Helsinki this question, given the just concluded ‘best of’ concert there, they were told it would be new songs. We’ll see whether that refers to new album(s).
And there is still the question of how this can be consistent with the release of a new French album in April, without, apparently, much on-the-ground promotion…
Lara’s tours are being organized by a professional company, as stated at:
www.prg.com/about-us/projects-showcase/prg-supports-lara-fabian-tour/
Here’s their press release:
----------------------------------------
October 2014
PRG EML Productions is delighted to accompany Belgian-Canadian singer Lara Fabian on an intimate tour that will take her through Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Slovakia and the USA.
Pierre Sarazin, Lara Fabian’s Manager, has chosen to work with PRG EML on this tour, stating:
“What defined my choice is the people I get to work with. The fixtures are mostly available everywhere in the market. There is always a lot of pressure in this business, a lot of things to do last minute and it’s important to me to work with people I share a certain loyalty and intellectual bond with. We must be able to keep the magic of the show, throughout some times hard moments but always find solutions together. In the past months, I’ve installed a brand new team around Lara. My goal is to keep this team, grow together and give a stable environment to Lara, both technically and humanly. Before each show I want everything to be perfect so that Lara doesn’t have to care about anything [other] than the songs. Later, when Lara will be back on bigger stages and other areas, I know I will be able to count on PRG as a worldwide group. I can definitely use the PRG network and rely on the support of other subsidiaries in France, USA, Brazil and so on.“
-------------------------------------------
It’s interesting that Lara also has a manager. For some time, she had been organizing her tours and taking care of her career herself. It was suggested in many quarters that she should rely on professionals, and that now seems to be the case – perhaps explaining her current outreach.
After all these places Lara will be, there are several places she was not. It was noted a few months ago that Lara had become a member of the association ‘L’enfant des Etoiles’, and in their press release they had indicated if she were available, she would join them for their production of “Maire’ on November 7th, in fact singing with them on stage for the final song (https://www.facebook.com/events/1435607786682195/). ‘Geo Faucon’ on the ‘Lara Fabian Web’ FB site indicated that Lara was not there. For her to miss it is somewhat surprising…
In the same vein, Rozenn Roz on the MZ FB site noted that the television production ‘The evening of Sidaction’, on November 16 17, would not include Lara. The listing of performers is otherwise a ‘whose who’ of French entertainers, as can be seen at:
www.emissions-TV.com/emissions/57/la_soiree_du_sidaction
Michel Jonasz, Lara’s duet partner will not be there either. In this case, Lara’s appearances in Moscow on the 15th and 16th are probably the reason for her absence, but it’s too bad, because it would have been an opportunity to counter some of the bad feelings building up among her Francophone fans.
In other news, a new group called "l’Ange de ses anges" has been organized. They describe themselves as “part of the great and beautiful family that gathers around Lara”. You can find their site at:
www.facebook.com/groups/1488347651450720/
Good luck to them. At this point in time, Lara needs all the French support she can get!
In case you’ve forgotten about it, ‘Make Me Yours Tonight’ is still around on the Turkish charts, having made it back to #4, after ~13 weeks in the Top 10 www.facebook.com/lapagedesfabianesk/photos/a.562919410434845.1073741837.501577866569000/778858358840948/?type=1&theater. And speaking of charts, the compilation ’30 years of the Top 50’, with Lara’s contributions, debuted at #1 in France. One imagines ‘Kiss and Love’ will do very well also when it has been out long enough to register (it was released November 3). We still have not seen the release of the ‘Best of’ album that ‘Odacity’ was preparing ‘for the fall’, obviously now too late for most of her tour.
The Lara Fabian PHQ site posted a beautiful picture of Lara; it can be seen at:
www.facebook.com/353946178085395/photos/a.353954938084519.1073741828.353946178085395/567283410085003/?type=1&theater
as did ‘Lara Fabian Mexico’, at: www.facebook.com/LaraFabianfromMexico/photos/a.556367684417296.1073741826.556364357750962/750256915028371/?type=1&theater
Lara will soon be leaving for her appearances in Moscow this weekend, if she is not there already (perhaps one reason for missing the ‘Maire’ performance). Given her schedule, she may well stay in the ‘countries to the east’ for the next several weeks. As we don’t necessarily expect her FB site to keep us informed, fans will have to do it! Meanwhile, we’ll see if there are any attempts on the part of Lara’s ‘people’ to calm the inflamed nerves of her French-speaking audience.
David
