Roxane Beaulieu striving for excellence
The Conseil de la culture de l’estrie (CCE) has served as an umbrella group for Townships artists of all disciplines since 1977.
“Our aim,” says Hélène Blais of the Sherbrooke-based non-profit organization, “is to bring together and to support artists and those who work on cultural endeavours. We help artists in different ways, including by giving their work as much visibility as possible.”
Among other things, the CCE awards several prizes every year. On June 15, at its Annual General Meeting, the CCE is going to announce the winner of this year’s Prix Excellence.
“Every winter we call for nominations,” explains the CCE’S communications director. “These can come from individuals or from groups and organizations. There were over two dozen nominations submitted this year. These were examined by a three-person jury, all of whom are themselves artists, and three finalists were selected. All of our members are eligible to vote for one of the three finalists. The AGM is a fitting moment to announce the winner.”
“There are two criteria for the prize,” she continues “In part, it’s to acknowledge and recognize the artist’s body of work, what they’ve done so far in their career. However, it also seeks to give impetus and support to a current project that reaches out into the immediate or broader community.”
The CCE’S three finalists this year are Deborah Davis, a visual artist from Sherbrooke, Jean-sébastien Dutil, a cinematographer from Sherbrooke with three films to his credit, and Roxane Beaulieu a musician and composer whose name is familiar in the Richmond area.
Raised in a musical household, Roxane Beaulieu was attracted to the piano while still a toddler.
“My maternal grandmother gave us her piano,” Roxane recalls. “I was a small kid, no more than three or four years old and I was fascinated by the alternating white and black keys. I loved the sounds it made and was often playing on it.”
“To a large extent, I’m self-taught although I grew up in a musical household,” she says. “Through my childhood and adolescence, we often played and sang together as a family. My mother plays piano and bass, my father plays guitar and base, my brother plays the drums, and my sister sings.”
“I played by ear until I was 16 and started Cegep where I enrolled in music,” she continues. “I was lucky because the school offered a crash course for students like me who had no formal training in theory and solfege. I had to work very hard that first year to learn to read music.”
Steep as the learning curve was, Roxane went on to study music at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
At the same time that she was studying, she was also performing. With her father and brother, she formed the jazz trio, Tangara. The group has most recently played at Sherbrooke’s OFF Festival and at an outdoor show at Lac des Nations on the May long weekend.
For several years, Roxane Beaulieu was also part of Maz, a Montreal-based jazz group. With Maz she toured in Canada, the U.S., Europe and a part of Africa. She played at several jazz festivals, including Montreal’s. She is on the group’s third album, to which she contributed several compositions.
“Covid brought Maz to a stop,” Roxane says. “We were on the point of starting a tour of the British Isles and Europe when everything was cancelled.”
Curiously enough, Covid also brought about two new opportunities. One is Roxane’s current project—nora la Trotteuse—which caught the eye of the CCE jury, the other is a new career as a music teacher and now director of the music school at Richmond’s Centre d’art.
“I very much appreciate being at the Centre d’art,” she says, “and I’m especially happy to be part of its mission to make art as accessible as possible to the community.”
Every year Richmond’s Centre d’art mounts special projects that offer free shows or workshops to the citizens of Val-saint-francois. Among others, Roxane participated in a workshop for adolescents that involved using the body as a percussion instrument. She also gave a workshop at the Maison de la famille de Windsor on musical awakening for children aged five and under, and their parents. On June 22, the Centre d’art will be giving a free outdoor concert at René Thibault Park on Main Street.
Roxane says, “Covid is also indirectly responsible for our show, Nora la Trotteuse, which translates loosely as Nora the Globetrotter, although in French, the second hand on a watch is known as the trotteuse.”
“The project began about three years ago when I interviewed several grandparents and grandchildren,” says Roxane. “Covid gave me time to work with Gabrielle Marquis, who’s a violinist. We composed the music for the show together. We also worked with Mylène Guay, who is a puppeteer, and who designed the silhouettes for the show. Samuel Carrier, an artist, built our two crankie boxes and spent six weeks on the drawings they use. Guillaume Briand did the sound and lighting for the show, and we had help from Cyril Assathiany of the CCE with the staging.”
Nora la Trotteuse is an unusual puppet show which, over 45 minutes, tells the story of a young girl’s adventures, meeting creatures as varied as sheep and earthworms as she travels from underground to outer space. The visual part of the show is provided by two crankie boxes, the larger of which measures five feet by nine feet and uses a 300-foot-long roll of paper.
(A crankie box consists of a wooden frame with two spools. As these turn, drawings on a roll of paper present the audience with one scene after another.)
The show is unusual in that there is no dialogue; instead, music carries the narrative thread.
“The show has a live music component,” says Roxane. “Gabrielle plays violin and alto (a slightly larger violin with a different tone) while I play accordion and piano.”
“Nora la Trotteuse is a children’s show,” she explains, “but it appeals to adults as well.”
“It has been presented 13 times to date,” she says. “We first presented it here at the Centre d’art de Richmond— which was special for me because when I was in my teens, I took a theatre course here and I was in a play on the very same stage. Classes from St. Francis Elementary, from Plein-coeur, and from Saint-philippe in Windsor
came to watch the show. We also put on six shows at the Maison de la Culture Maisonneuve in Montreal.”
“Looking ahead,” Roxane Beaulieu continues, “we have a booking in Saintdenis-de-brompton in December, but we’re hoping to be able to tour the show across Quebec and perhaps southern Ontario. We’re not sure when, but we also want to put it on here at the Centre d’art for a general audience.”
As for the Prix Excellence, Roxane feels very honoured just to have been named a finalist. She’s especially pleased that through this prize the CCE is drawing attention to the community engagement of local artists.