She followed her heart: "Maison Vent (Album)" by Willows

"Maison Vent (Album)" by Willows

Geneviève Toupin revealed herself in 2014 through an alias: Willows. In a delicate folk blend of acoustic instruments and vocal harmonies sounding as good in French as in English, the singer-songwriter creates an authentic body of work. The album Willow (2014) and the EP The Hills (2021), the latter produced by Joseph Marchand (Pierre Lapointe, Safia Nolin), are evocative testimonies.

Alongside her solo career, Geneviève is active as a composer and musician for other projects. She is a founding member of the electro-pop group CHANCES, with whom she recently had the opportunity to perform with in the multidisciplinary music and circus show Après la nuit for the Montreal complèment cirque Festival. She is a singer in Danse Lhasa Danse as well as in Jorane’s project Hemenetset. She also co-composed the score to Marie-France Guerrette’s documentary Unmothered for the National Film Board.

Throughout the album, Willows weaves in elements of identity, talking about the tug of war between two languages, two provinces, and what it is to be a Red River Métis woman of Franco-Manitoban origin and now an adopted Quebecer. 

“In my songs, you feel the connection to the territory. They evoke the wind, the earth, the lakes, the rivers, the wide open spaces and the road. I follow my heart, which takes me on a 2000 kilometer round trip from East to West,” explains Willows, who sings mainly in French, while adding a little English and Métchif-Français, the ancestral language of the Métis Nation.

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Photo credits: Lucille Parry-Canet