Celine's next project after the world tour

[Prince Whiskers]

According to CBC.ca, Celine and Rene are *reportedly* weighing a proposal for her to return to Quebec and perform with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2009. The second baby will have to wait, I guess.

[celinerific]

Oi veeeyy. Give the woman a break!

[jackydion]

Symphony Orchestra ?

 

is that the last show?

[VinnyT.]

Dion-MSO collaboration possible for '09

ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, The Gazette

Published: 21 minutes ago

 

Céline Dion, who closes an almost-five-year run in Las Vegas tonight, may be taking her chances with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2009.

 

La Presse has quoted the singer's husband and artistic manager, René Angélil, to the effect that two concerts with the orchestra would be a better-than-even bet after the close of Dion's Taking Chances world tour on Jan. 30, 2009.

 

"Kent Nagano impressed me," Angélil told the paper. The MSO music director flew to Las Vegas last week with MSO administrative boss Madeleine Careau and pop lyricist Luc Plamondon to see the high-tech spectacle. Angélil said Nagano first met Dion on the occasion of her Ste. Justine Hospital benefit at the Bell Centre in August.

 

The MSO did not return phone calls yesterday.

 

While the notion of an MSO-Dion collaboration has been in the air for years, this is the first evidence of interest on Dion's end. Repertoire is an open question. The closest thing to classical in A New Day, her Las Vegas show, was Ammore Annascunnuto, a Neapolitan ballad.

 

The chanteuse has lately expressed an interest in Maria Callas, claiming that one of her recurring dreams is to win an Academy Award as an actress for a film portrayal of the late operatic superstar. Dion's 2007 tribute-to-womanhood album, D'Elles, includes La Diva, a reflection on Callas with words by the Quebec novelist and cultural critic Denise Bombardier, who noticed a resemblance when she visited Dion backstage in Las Vegas.

 

When asked at the launch of A New Day whether Dion would ever try classical, Angélil did not rule out such an experiment.

 

"We had Bach at our wedding," he said at a 2003 news conference at Caesars Palace, noting also that classical was Dion's first choice at home after silence.

 

Testimony on this point, however, is contradictory. In a recent interview in the Australian newspaper the Daily Telegraph, Dion said she was a fan of the veteran metal band AC/DC.

 

Not that her cover of You Shook Me All Night Long has met with universal acclaim among rock fans. Classical might prove a better fit. Or it might not.

[Thomas]

Well, if it's only two concerts then it won't really affect anything regarding a second child.

[thevoice]

again - a misleading title and message . how 2 concerts will effect her future plans? Edited December 15, 2007 at 10:07 AM by thevoice

[Céline's Blues]

Céline's next project after Tanking Flops?????????????

 

Well let's see...

 

hm........

 

Yes! Let's sing Symphonic Orchestra guided by Alicia Keys' top smash hit tour main conductor: Larry Gold!

 

And let's do it in Montreal around the same time (2009) where Alicia will get her 50 times MULTI DIAMOND platinum award for "As I Am" and also Order Of Canada from premier ministre for "bring music forward more than any Celine or Selin Something ever could. We-Want-Alicia-Keys-To -Be-Canadian-Citizen-Order - congratulations and salutations!"

[sgcpc]

oh plz.... just 2 concerts, hows this gonna affect the baby? another misleading title!

[Shesings2me]

Céline's next project after Tanking Flops?????????????

 

Well let's see...

 

hm........

 

Yes! Let's sing Symphonic Orchestra guided by Alicia Keys' top smash hit tour main conductor: Larry Gold!

 

And let's do it in Montreal around the same time (2009) where Alicia will get her 50 times MULTI DIAMOND platinum award for "As I Am" and also Order Of Canada from premier ministre for "bring music forward more than any Celine or Selin Something ever could. We-Want-Alicia-Keys-To -Be-Canadian-Citizen-Order - congratulations and salutations!"

 

 

If Alicia Keys ends up still having fun and making great music in 20 years from now, then you can talk my friend. But until then...sssshhhhhhhh. What are you doing in here...exactly?!

[Shesings2me]

...and Celine would do classical as angelically as she does everything else. Her voice would sound even more beautiful and heavenly if accompanied by the MSO. I would be there in an instant...count me in!!!!

[bruno_oliveira]

i found a solution to celines retirement!!

 

she can record songs and make music videos with a "more than real" virtual celine.

 

 

she could be entirely scanned...

and make a lot of music videos!!!!

 

and be with rene charles and rene..and new baby at the same time ahahaha

Edited December 15, 2007 at 02:23 PM by bruno_oliveira

[Cesdra]

Well, a lot of artists and bands have had projects with orchestras. You don't need to do classical to do that. And besides, if she can work with Kent Nagano, all I can say is: Go, for it baby! He is pretty cool. That would surly would be amazing for both sides.

[JP]

I hope she'll do it, it will be very interesting!!

BTW, she will meet the director, Kent Nagano in January in Paris

[peo]

Wow!!! Celine keeps on going an going she has to take a break!

[Xpresso]

Céline's next project after Tanking Flops?????????????

 

Well let's see...

 

hm........

 

Yes! Let's sing Symphonic Orchestra guided by Alicia Keys' top smash hit tour main conductor: Larry Gold!

 

And let's do it in Montreal around the same time (2009) where Alicia will get her 50 times MULTI DIAMOND platinum award for "As I Am" and also Order Of Canada from premier ministre for "bring music forward more than any Celine or Selin Something ever could. We-Want-Alicia-Keys-To -Be-Canadian-Citizen-Order - congratulations and salutations!"

 

You're becoming REALLY negative these days... or you're in love with Alicia more than Celine... Have you betrayed your dear Celine?????

[Prince Whiskers]

How could THEVOICE and SGCPC say that the title of this thread was misleading? If a two-night engagement with the MSO cannot be called a "project", then what it is? It's an undertaking that will no doubt require serious effort from Celine cuz the genre involved is classical, something she just dabbled in before. If Celine accepts the offer, she will no doubt make sure that her voice will be in tip-top shape. Definitely no nasal Vegas voice for her. And my mention of the second baby was clearly JUST AN OPINION as I evidently added the words "I guess". My source, CBC.ca, didn't specify that it would be just for two nights.

 

And don't be surprised if her next French album (WHENEVER that will be) will be classical and/or a reunion with Luc Plamondon.

[Cris77]

And don't be surprised if her next French album (WHENEVER that will be) will be classical and/or a reunion with Luc Plamondon.

 

 

What an interesting thing. I wish it very much. A classical french album with Luc Plamondon. I once saw a video Where Celine was performing live "L'amour Existe Encore". It was an orchestral version. Beautiful very, very emotional. I wish something like that.

[SlovakClark]

Céline's next project after Tanking Flops?????????????

 

Well let's see...

 

hm........

 

Yes! Let's sing Symphonic Orchestra guided by Alicia Keys' top smash hit tour main conductor: Larry Gold!

 

And let's do it in Montreal around the same time (2009) where Alicia will get her 50 times MULTI DIAMOND platinum award for "As I Am" and also Order Of Canada from premier ministre for "bring music forward more than any Celine or Selin Something ever could. We-Want-Alicia-Keys-To -Be-Canadian-Citizen-Order - congratulations and salutations!"

 

I feel the same to trust me...

[CSCfan]

Maestro scores in Quebec

 

Graeme Hamilton, National Post

Published: Friday, May 22, 2009

 

MONTREAL -- The riots that followed a fatal police shooting in Montreal North last summer were still fresh in people's minds, the wounds in the underprivileged neighbourhood still raw, when an unlikely ambassador arrived.

 

Kent Nagano, music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, is at home in the capitals of Europe and currently divides his time among Munich, Montreal, Paris and San Francisco. When music is heard on the streets of Montreal North, it is more likely to be hip hop than Handel. But on a September evening last year, Mr. Nagano's stage was in a parking lot outside the Montreal North city hall, and on the program were Beethoven and Rossini.

 

"We didn't have any expectations of how many people would come. We expected anywhere from a handful of people to maybe a couple hundred," Mr. Nagano recalled in an interview this week. In the end, nearly 10,000 people turned out to hear him conduct. "We were really surprised at the response," he said.

 

He shouldn't have been, considering his experience since officially arriving as MSO maestro in 2006. Even before his inaugural concert, which was signalled by the pealing of church bells around the city, there was talk of "Naganomania" gripping Montrealers. Leaving aside his impressive musical résumé, his handsome features and thick, shoulder-length hair were enough to make him an ideal poster boy for the MSO as it emerged from a tumultuous period. A musicians' strike had abbreviated the 2005-06 season, and the previous conductor, the renowned Charles Dutoit, had quit in 2002 following a nasty feud with the musicians' union.

 

Mr. Nagano, 57, a native of California who most recently had been conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin, was the MSO's dream candidate as it sought to replace Mr. Dutoit, music director since 1977. Madeleine Careau, chief executive of the orchestra, said he was a good fit for the city. "In Montreal, we like stars. We like people who have a kind of aura. Charles Dutoit had an aura and was very popular," she said. "People don't want to have a conductor who, even if he's very good, is very low profile."

 

Mr. Nagano said he was taken aback by the rock-star treatment accorded his arrival in Montreal. Photographers and reporters staked out the airport to intercept him as he arrived from Los Angeles for a 2004 news conference confirming that he would be the next music director. His inaugural concert was broadcast live on Radio-Canada and played on giant screens outside Montreal's Place des Arts, where thousands gathered to listen.

 

"I think no one can really expect the richness and the depth of the Quebec culture unless you've had a chance to experience it," Mr. Nagano said. "For me I was really both surprised and deeply humbled, because that kind of engagement from the community, from the society, is rare in today's world."

 

As the concert in Montreal North showed, the engagement is reciprocal.

 

The orchestra plays an ambassadorial role. "An ambassador, yes, partly of Canada, but also of the profound human spirit." Mr. Nagano said. "On stage, we're just musicians. We're just artists, nothing more. But the repertoire, which we perform, is an expression of humanity."

 

He reaches for that humanity not only in centuries-old European compositions but in the Canada he is intent on discovering. Recent MSO programs have included a new composition by Denis Gougeon inspired by folk music Mr. Nagano heard when he took his daughter to a Quebec maple sugar shack. There have been tributes to General Roméo Dallaire and Terry Fox and a work inspired by hockey's Montreal Canadiens, titled Les Glorieux. This season, the MSO performed a "Concerto for Radio Host and Orchestra," featuring popular Radio-Canada morning man René Homier-Roy.

 

Mr. Nagano has even donned a Canadiens jersey, with his name on the back, when conducting the hockey-themed music, and has donned an Alouettes jersey at a Molson Stadium concert. These are stunts usually left to rock musicians. (The Habs jersey, on a hanger on the inside of his door, is one of the few decorative objects in his Place des Arts office.) But even when the subject matter is hockey -- or "ice hockey" as Mr. Nagano calls it, betraying his Californian roots -- the themes run deeper than slapshots and bodychecks.

 

He had wanted the orchestra to perform Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), but there was concern that the MSO had already performed the work to death. "Then came the idea, well we have heroes here in Montreal. We have the Canadiens. So why don't we have a work written about the Canadiens," he said. In the program the new composition was paired with Strauss. "One might then hear Ein Heldenleben a little bit differently, because the context is different."

 

It is all part of Mr. Nagano's commitment to bringing the MSO's music to a broader audience, and offering music as a balm when needed. The first major tour he embarked on with the MSO was of Canada -- Tokyo and Paris could wait. The orchestra's 2007 tour began in Yellowknife and ended in St. John's.

 

He also took a group of musicians to northern Quebec last fall for a series of concerts in Inuit villages, playing in community halls and school gymnasiums that held a few hundred spectators.

 

Classical music snobs might sniff that the audiences in Montreal North or Kuujuak -- or, for that matter, the 15,000 who filled Montreal's Bell Centre for a hockey-themed MSO concert last month -- are drawn by the spectacle rather than the music. That would be wrong, Mr. Nagano said. "Most artists would agree that one of the biggest mistakes one can make is to underestimate the sophistication of the public," he said.

 

His discussion about the outreach concerts quickly veered from music to history, as he spoke of the "sense of individualism, of liberty, of freedom, of humanitarian rights" that developed after the Napoleonic Wars and that informed the great classical repertoire of the 19th century.

 

"What could be more relevant for 2008 and 2009 than to perform this music for as large a public as you can? That's what Beethoven would have wanted," he said.

 

Mr. Nagano's at times offbeat approach initially perplexed local music critics, but they seem to have warmed to him. And there is no sign that the greater public is falling out of love. The MSO was named La Presse's "personality of the week" in recognition of its Montreal North concert, and in January the business newspaper Les Affaires placed Mr. Nagano fourth on its list of inspiring Quebec leaders. This week he was besieged by pint-sized autograph seekers during a visit to a primary school breakfast program.

 

Discussions begin this summer to renew Mr. Nagano's five-year contract, which expires in August, 2011, just as the MSO is scheduled to move into a new concert hall.

 

"For sure he wants to come back in this concert hall," Ms. Careau said. "He played a very important role in finally getting this concert hall for Montreal." He has still not settled here, listing Munich (where he is music director of the Bavarian State Opera) Paris, San Francisco "and sometimes Montreal" as his places of residency. His wife, the pianist Mari Kodama, and daughter Karin are based in Paris to be close to Karin's piano teacher.

 

Among the unfinished business on Mr. Nagano's agenda is an odd mission that perhaps cements his status as an honourary Quebecer: He wants to conduct an MSO collaboration with homegrown pop diva Celine Dion. They have met several times, and Ms. Dion even sang some opera for him last year, according to a report in La Presse. (The newspaper said Mr. Nagano recommended some opera lessons.)

 

"Celine is a very special artist. In our world today we have so many genres, so many compartments, everything has to be labelled and put into a little area, but at the very top levels, those barriers tend to fall away," Mr. Nagano told the National Post.

 

He then placed Ms. Dion in rarefied company.

 

"Is Alfred Brendel a pianist? Well, yes but he's much, much more than a pianist. He's a poet. He's a writer. He's a philosopher. Was Yehudi Menuhin a violinist? Yes, but he was much, much more than that - a humanitarian, a cultural ambassador. Celine Dion is at that highest quality level where to call her a singer is not enough. She is just simply an artist."

 

National Post

[anewdayhascome]

not now!

[Teodora]

Dion-MSO collaboration possible for '09

ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, The Gazette

Published: 21 minutes ago

 

Céline Dion, who closes an almost-five-year run in Las Vegas tonight, may be taking her chances with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2009.

 

La Presse has quoted the singer's husband and artistic manager, René Angélil, to the effect that two concerts with the orchestra would be a better-than-even bet after the close of Dion's Taking Chances world tour on Jan. 30, 2009.

 

"Kent Nagano impressed me," Angélil told the paper. The MSO music director flew to Las Vegas last week with MSO administrative boss Madeleine Careau and pop lyricist Luc Plamondon to see the high-tech spectacle. Angélil said Nagano first met Dion on the occasion of her Ste. Justine Hospital benefit at the Bell Centre in August.

 

The MSO did not return phone calls yesterday.

 

While the notion of an MSO-Dion collaboration has been in the air for years, this is the first evidence of interest on Dion's end. Repertoire is an open question. The closest thing to classical in A New Day, her Las Vegas show, was Ammore Annascunnuto, a Neapolitan ballad.

 

The chanteuse has lately expressed an interest in Maria Callas, claiming that one of her recurring dreams is to win an Academy Award as an actress for a film portrayal of the late operatic superstar. Dion's 2007 tribute-to-womanhood album, D'Elles, includes La Diva, a reflection on Callas with words by the Quebec novelist and cultural critic Denise Bombardier, who noticed a resemblance when she visited Dion backstage in Las Vegas.

 

When asked at the launch of A New Day whether Dion would ever try classical, Angélil did not rule out such an experiment.

 

"We had Bach at our wedding," he said at a 2003 news conference at Caesars Palace, noting also that classical was Dion's first choice at home after silence.

 

Testimony on this point, however, is contradictory. In a recent interview in the Australian newspaper the Daily Telegraph, Dion said she was a fan of the veteran metal band AC/DC.

 

Not that her cover of You Shook Me All Night Long has met with universal acclaim among rock fans. Classical might prove a better fit. Or it might not.

Look at the time references guys... This is old news.

[CSCfan]

The fact that the collaboration is still on Mr. Nagano's list, isn't....

[SensationalCeline]

I don't think that Celine would put this before trying to have another baby. She wants another child so much.