Growing up on Montreal’s south shore, Simon Boisseau taught himself to play music when he was around 8 years old by playing piano along with rock bands from the 60s and 70s such as the Beatles and Supertramp. Within a couple of years, he was writing his first songs. In 2019, he recorded his first album, Colorblind, when he was just 17 years old. Now 21, he’ll soon launch his second album, Le déjeuner. The first single, Fuir, is a neo-classical leap into the unknown.

Today, while Simon is drawn toward the music of André Gagnon and Claude Léveillée, he listens to Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson and finds inspiration in Japanese pop from the 70s and all sorts of rock bands. Boisseau recently went back to school to learn more about music theory. He’s majoring in classical piano and has started a B.A. in musical instruction.

This isn’t Simon Boisseau’s first project, although his current solo venture is a change from writing and performing with the pop rock band Barber for the Queen, which is already well-established in the Montreal indie scene.

That’s how Boisseau learned to create in a group context, and the on-stage experience he’s acquired will surely contribute to his solo project. Since Barber for the Queen’s sound is quite distinct from his neo-classical project, the band remains at the core of his creative impulse. Boisseau keeps both projects in mind when coming up with a new composition. These interrelated avenues for his creativity allow him to, as he says, “evoke a situation or feeling that I can’t put into words without a piano.”