The Triste Festival, from November 23 to 26, invites the public to explore the beauty of sadness through art, in all its forms. Discussions with the co-founder of the event, Anne-Julie St-Laurent, as well as with singer-songwriter Helena Deland, who will launch her recent (and sad) album as part of the festival.
It is not very complicated to understand what links Helena Deland’s album Goodnight Summerland and the Festival Triste, where she will present it for the first time on stage in Montreal. The record released at the end of October is marked by the mourning of the artist’s mother, who translated the vivid emotions of this loss into stripped-down folk pieces. “It’s an extremely sad experience, among other things,” the artist told us, reached by telephone upon her return to Montreal, after a series of shows in the United States and Canada.
She also explains to us that she has sometimes been asked, with a tinge of reproach, why so much sadness permeates her work. “It’s a bit strange to ask someone that their music not be sad,” notes Helena Deland, whose album is also “full of other things”, but who, like many artists, has made of his pain a canvas.
Hearing him speak, we understand even better why the Festival Triste, where you never risk being reproached for your melancholy, is the ideal place for the Goodnight Summerland launch show.
For the second year, sadness will be in the spotlight in Mile End. Concerts, dance shows, film screenings, installations, discussions… around this universal theme, the organizers of the event wish to create communion, exchanges and entertainment. Sadness is universal, but not necessarily celebrated or even accepted. However, in this month of November, this invitation to dive headfirst into this feeling by surrounding yourself with art is not so far-fetched.
“Sometimes you might want to go and consume art with people, but it should be something softer, more introspective, more vulnerable,” says Anne-Julie St-Laurent, co-founder of the ‘event. It is from this desire that the Festival was born. The one who also co-founded the Bleu Bleu festival, in Gaspésie, found herself in 2018 wanting to sometimes be in a festival context… without it being festive. A conversation with his friend, the musician Joseph Marchand, gave rise to the idea of the Festival Triste. Four years later, accompanied by Maxime Genois and Alice Perron-Savard, Anne-Julie St-Laurent brought her idea to life.
“When I talked to people about it, half asked me why I was doing it and thought it was negative and the other half were really, really invested,” she says.
The co-founder notes that the event allows us to experience vivid emotions in a context to which we rarely have access. But we laugh, we exchange and we dance (during the Electrist Evenings) also at the Festival Triste. And, above all, we celebrate a multitude of art forms, between cinema evenings (at Cinéma Moderne) or poetry, music or dance shows, installation exhibitions or performances.
At the Triste Festival, you can go see the film Ordinary Tendress, by Jacques Leduc. We will be able to attend the performance To be born is to disappear, by multidisciplinary artist Nana Quinn. Klô Pelgag will present her Sad Show, Anachnid will launch her album freak of nature, Gazoline will offer her last show. The theme of sadness appeals to many partners who allow the organizers to build a diverse festival, says Anne-Julie St-Laurent.
Thus, Helena Deland will take the stage of La Tulipe with a show that will be sad, but not only that. For this first headlining tour, she presents the entirety of her recent opus and overviews the previous one, surrounded by a group of musicians with whom she feels confident enough to perform such personal songs together.
She wanted this album to be more “humble” aesthetically. “There was a sense of urgency too, that it had to come out because I didn’t want to be faced with these songs for too long,” she says. Again, because the record is so full of deeply personal feeling, its release was also a heartbreaking moment. “Two days before the release, I didn’t understand why, but I was crying, I was really sad,” says Helena Deland. I was experiencing an anticipated separation with this very personal object. I was afraid of being disappointed too. »
Ultimately, the audience quickly made it clear to him how much they understood his work, a “really great reward” for the artist. This universality in sadness was also felt this time.
