Award-winning and highly acclaimed band Le Vent du Nord will be performing March 29 at Westminster Hall, First Presbyterian Church in Yellow Springs. The performance is a part of the Foundry Theater’s 2026 season.
Next year is Le Vent du Nord’s 25th anniversary. But Duo Boulerice-Demers’ 2001 album with a long-winded title — “Le Vent du Nord est toujours fret…” which translates to “the north wind is always cold wherever it comes from” — is the basis for the name. The then duo, made up of current members Nicolas Boulerice and Olivier Demers, formed Le Vent du Nord’s original lineup in 2002. The group’s first eight recordings were nominated for multiple awards.
Traditional music carries the weight of previous generations. Le Vent du Nord honors the past while progressing it forward.
“It’s really part of our creative process to respect the old way,” said Olivier Demers, fiddler and founder of the group. “To play the swing of the fiddle, the accordion, the tempos, to sing without any restriction, to just deliver the song… that’s what the elders were doing. They were just singing without any other consideration of what is nice or good or beautiful.”
The musicians research the archives and pay respect to what came before. At the same time, Le Vent du Nord doesn’t hesitate to approach the music as a constant evolution; the songs can be dressed in different arrangements, heard in the group’s bass grooves and evolving chord changes. It treats a song or a fiddle tune as raw material to build with.
“We live in 2026, like everybody, and this music, it’s not museum music,” Demers said. “It will constantly evolve, and we’re about there in this process.”
Le Vent du Nord exists in a Celtic universe with jigs and reels — fit with a hurdy-gurdy and powerful acapella — all while singing in French. For over two decades, Le Vent du Nord has mostly played for non-francophone audiences around the world. Though the songs are delivered in French, it’s no different than hearing Cuban, salsa or Cape Verde music. People outside of the language find ways to interact and grab something from the experience of hearing it.
Bringing the music outside of Quebec has informed Demers’ own understanding of his home’s cultural identity.
“For us, we’re presenting a living tradition,” he said. “This music is played in families, in kitchens, in parties, in gatherings of friends, in the day to day. We don’t perform something that doesn’t exist anymore in real life. To be those people who represent this community, it makes us very proud, because we want to say to the world that there’s this unique culture in North America that wants to exist.”
On its latest record, “Voisinages,” Le Vent du Nord offers light within the darkness. Like many of its records, the songs on “Voisinages” are often sad but delivered with a positive twang. Live, it’s the experience of gathering together for an exchange: To see concerts and hear positive music plants the seed of hope that it will get better at some point.
As traditional music is played through a modern context, the music itself adapts to the times. As aged as some of the folk revival tunes of the 1970s sound today, it was, then, modern music.
“The world is moving. Our ears are moving because we listen to plenty of good stuff from all around the world,” Demers said. “The respect of the essence of this tune or that song, its importance, that creates the link between the period, and we’re just a part of a chain. That will push it forward in time.”
HOW TO GO
What: Le Vent du Nord
When: 7 p.m. March 29
Where: Westminster Hall, First Presbyterian Church, 314 Xenia Ave., Yellow Springs
Cost: $35 general admission, $5 student admission
Tickets: antiochcollege.edu
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