La Voix gives Quebecers their very own Voice
Local adaptation of singing competition won’t stray too far from popular blueprint
The Voice is coming to Quebec. Or rather, make that La Voix.
La Voix, the Québécois adaptation of the international TV sensation premieres on TVA on Sunday night with the first blind audition show. Just like the American version, during the first few weeks the four coaches will sit with their seats turned away from the performers to judge the singers based solely on their vocals — and not their visuals!
“I am a big fan of The Voice,” said Charles Lafortune, who is hosting La Voix. “I found it really intriguing, that whole thing that the coaches don’t know who’s singing in the blind auditions. It gives all the contestants an even chance. So you can be tall, fat, skinny, old, young. It doesn’t matter. It’s only the voice that counts. So that’s the great thing in the concept of the show. Also, the only rule is that you can’t have had a record deal. So it’s from 16 to 116. You have boys or girls that are only 16. And you can have a 52-year-old who’s maybe done some musicals.”
In a break f rom frantic work in the editing suite this week, Stéphane Laporte — the director and guy in charge of the Quebec adaptation of The Voice — was on the phone saying La Voix really follows the exact same format as the NBC version of the TV format that originated in Holland with reality TV kingpin John de Mol. So the four coaches will each form a team of singers.
“We kept all of the same structure,” Laporte said. “The big difference I’d say is what I’d call ‘la coté plus Latin’ of the coaches in their interventions, in their relationship with each other. We have coaches who are very expressive. They’re very warm. They’re really intense.”
The judges on The Voice in the U.S. were Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera, though both Green and Aguilera will be not be back for the upcoming season, which starts March 25. They’ll be replaced by Usher and Shakira.
The judges on La Voix are local singers Ariane Moffatt, Marie-Mai, Jean-Pierre Ferland and Marc Dupré. The other major difference between the American and the Quebec shows is that much of the music sung on La Voix will be en français, with Laporte guesstimating that the French-English ratio probably will be around 60-40 in favour of the language of Céline.
“It’s really a reflection of what we listen to in Quebec,” Laporte said. “There’s Québécois music, American music, Canadian music and music from France. It’s a good reflection of what plays on the radio here.”
It will start with four weeks of Sunday-night blind auditions, followed by four weeks of duos, and, finally, five weeks of live performance, which is when the public is able to start voting for who they want to stay and who they want to go. The grand finale is Sunday, April 14, when the winner of the first edition of La Voix will be chosen.
There will also be shows during the week on TVA: There will be behind-thescenes shows on Monday nights during the first four weeks, starting this Monday, and once Les Duels, the duo section, kicks off, each week there will be a show Sunday, the behind-the-scenes show Monday and a pre-gala show Friday nights.
The Voix team auditioned 5,000 singers across the province this fall before whittling the competition down to the 140 chanteurs et chanteuses who strut their stuff for the coaches on the first blind audition show. All the shows are being taped at Mel’s Cité du Cinéma studios in St. Hubert in front of a live audience.
Julie Snyder’s Productions J is the company behind both Star Académie, until now the province’s leading singing competition, and La Voix. But Laporte, who is deeply involved with both franchises, says they have made every effort to ensure the two shows are very different.
“La Voix is much more of a competition than Star Académie,” Laporte said. “Like Les Duels are really like boxing matches with two singers duking it out in the ring; whereas with Star Académie, the Sunday night galas were really big variety shows. Sure, there was a competition in that gala, but it was less underlined than in La Voix, where it’s all about the competition.”
So will it work in Quebec? Laporte is pretty confident it will.
“We have two passions in Quebec, hockey and la chanson,” Laporte said. “I’ve been doing auditions of singers since 2003 (for Star Académie and then La Voix), and so I’ve auditioned more than 30,000 people. Imagine we had 5,000 people auditioning for La Voix and what really floored the coaches was the quality of the 140 singers who made the final cut. We have so many great singers in Quebec because people here are passionate about la chanson.”
Like The Voice, La Voix will feature virtually every style of music, from heavy metal to Top 40, pop to alt-rock.
“In Quebec, there are a lot of great voices,” Lafortune said. “It’s incredible. We don’t have anything to envy of any (singing-competition) show in the world.”
La Voix premieres on TVA Sunday at 7:30 p.m.