Jean-Michel Blais

Jean-Michel Blais was ready to make an epic. mirador, the pianist-composer's fourth album, finds the Montreal artist turning his gaze onto a wide, wondrous world—exchanging contemporary minimalism for a light and generous maximalism. It's an odyssey that spans choirs, strings and the music of the Andes, running from Spanish caves to Estonian forests and back again to the hideaway in tiny Nicolet, Québec, where Blais first imagined the adventures that might await him. After 375 million streams and the biggest concerts of his life, the origins of mirador were remembrances from Blais' childhood. Back then, he was a musical kid dreaming up worlds in his basement: turning pages in a Larousse encyclopedia; arranging its volumes into a castle; playing with Fisher Price instruments and his family's cheap Hammond organ; endlessly replaying the same cassettes. Even if he wasn't fully aware of these things yet, as a queer person, a person with Tourette's, the basement was Blais' refuge—an imaginary lookout, a "mirador." "As kids," he remembers, "we made so much with nothing. We dreamed so big without even leaving our homes." Sometimes Blais would watch old videos of his parents, ballroom-dancing; other times he'd try to imagine his father as a choir-boy, singing at a wedding. Years later, when Blais had begun experimenting with orchestration (for 2022's aubades), he was struck by the idea that every instrument is being played by a human being.