Telling Stories with Music: Concert Featuring Bertrand Laurence

Join us Sunday, November 30th, for a special musical performance featuring guitarist and singer-songwriter Bertrand Laurence.

Bertrand Laurence is an international performer with a wide Festival, Concert and Club experience, having performed in venues across North America, Europe, and Asia. Laurence’s music entails a unique blending of traditional Blues/Swing/Ragtime/Folk as well as contemporary styles. His melodic stories and anecdotes derive from his observations and adventures in the U.S. as a Frenchman, social worker, mime, children’s theatre director, and musician.

From Rouen, the capital of Normandy in France’s northern region, Laurence recounts his early attraction to the rhythms and strings of acoustic blues music. Drawn by such tempos emanating from the U.S., Laurence departed France to study blues orally from concerts and radio shows, soon leading to his enrollment at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he remained for a semester. While in Boston, Laurence became one of the first artists to perform at the original House of Blues near Harvard Square in Cambridge. Laurence was soon featured on NPR’s “Blues Stage,” whose host at the time – singer-songwriter, actress, and “Queen of R&B,” Ruth Brown – commented, “The man sure has his way with the boogie!”

Laurence traveled throughout the American South, recognizing and celebrating the inseparability of the French language with blues-based American music (e.g., Zydeco, Swing, Jazz, Soul, Rock’ n’ Roll). There, he could be found performing regularly in New Orleans, particularly at the Lafayette International Festival. Laurence has performed at various other festivals, including The Boston Blues Festival, Boston Folk Festival, Montreal Jazz, NYC International Busker’s Fair, and the Jazz au Mercure festival in Toulouse, France.

Laurence has led workshops and lectures on creativity and performance, and adopts a body-centered pedagogy in his music-making, enriched with mindful breath-works, centering meditation, and stress-reduction. He has taught “Guitar & Voice” nation-wide virtually via Zoom, and has designed a new workshop, “Finding your Voice,” coaching introspection (inner voice) and expression (written and vocal) amongst his trainees to connect and release authentic artistic form.

Learn more about Bertrand Laurence and his work by visiting his websites below:
www.creativeground.org/profile/bertrand-laurence
https://bertrandlaurence.bandcamp.com/music

Admission is free and/or by donation.

Your donation helps support the arts within Northern Maine, and contributes to the Musée’s mission of restoring and preserving the former church of Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel, the artefacts of its permanent collection, and the broader grounds of its former parish.