photo : Danielle Giguère
Violinist and singer, Liette Remon has created shows and founded various ensembles that draw their inspiration from tradition (Fanfare Monfarleau, Bobelo, Talencourt, Histoires de femmes à l’ouvrage, Les Passeurs d’airs, etc.). She also participates in various world music projects with the company Strada. In 2021, she received the title of Master of Living Traditions awarded by the Conseil québécois du patrimoine vivant.
“I learned the violin with my father Réginald who had learned it from his jigger mother and from his grandparents Bernatchez from rang des 28 in Grande-Rivière in Gaspésie. On my mother's side, at the Leblancs of St-François-de-Pabos, between Chandler and Grande Rivière, my grandfather Diogenes and his 15 children all sang and played an instrument: organ, piano, violin, accordion and harmonica. It is not yet a professional career, but it is the exceptional terroir from which I come and which determined my passion for music.
I left Gaspésie to study violin and clarinet in Rimouski before completing a bachelor's degree in music education in Quebec City in 1998. Over the course of advanced training courses and collaborations, I discovered new musical families ( Ensemble Strada, Via Musique) with whom I developed an expertise in ancient and medieval music on period instruments: fiddle, rebec, chalumeau and bagpipes as well as in traditional music from around the world.
I have never ceased to be interested in the traditional music of the different regions of Quebec, its repertoire and the finesse of the playing of the bearers of tradition. Listening to the living as well as to lost giants (Louis "Pitou" Boudreault, Philippe Bruneau, André Alain, Jos Bouchard), I worked tirelessly to perfect myself, affirm my own identity as a fiddler and teach myself. . Concerned about preserving and transmitting, I published two collections of quaver tunes from the traditional Quebec repertoire and recorded several albums documenting my personal projects. Among these, Un p'tit air de famille and Comté de Gaspé Sud, pay homage to anonymous Gaspé fiddlers by highlighting both the pieces and ways of doing things learned in my line as those of the marvelous musicians (Cyr, Dubé, Castilloux) who surrounded us.
Living from the practice and transmission of live music in Quebec requires constant activity and creativity. To achieve this, I have multiplied approaches and been part of many ensembles with diverse repertoires reaching audiences of all ages through educational activities, recordings and shows. I also founded five ensembles dedicated to traditional music from Quebec: Fanfare Monfarleau, Serre l'Écoute, Le Tour de la Gaspésie, Bobelo, Quatuor Talencourt, which have shone on stage both in Quebec and in Europe. »