Biography of the artist
Born in Valleyfield, Québec, the musician, author and composer Alain Lecompte studied piano and guitar at the famous École de Musique Vincent d’Indy in Montréal, in the 70s. But the young musician preferred singing to a career as a classical concertist.
After having taught numerous subjects in music, he spent his summer vacations on tour in Québec with his musical companion Claude Prégent, future comedian. Lecompte opted for the theater, while his partner Prégent contributed musical accompaniments for various shows, notably at the Rideau Vert. During that same time, Lecompte collaborated with Jacques Blanchet in composing and arranging many songs. Among others, he worked with theater impresarios Jean Barbeau and Raymond Villeneuve.
All the while interested in literature, Lecompte launched his premier solo performance, titled De bouche à oreille, in 1983. The following years were shared between his own shows and new musical collaborations with Guy Godin, Daniel Guérard and Céline Faucher, with whom he would continue to collaborate for the next decade.
After having participated in the francophone sessions at the Sancoins theater in France, he released his first instrumental album, Promenades (1998).
Lecompte continues to accompany diverse artists such as Eva and Pierre Barouh, who encouraged him to take on a new project: to put into music and song the words of his favorite author, Victor Hugo! A daunting task, particularly when one considers how little the famous author himself had to do with music (“it’s noise that thinks,” Hugo once said.) But creators love challenges, especially musicians. A first version of the concept was presented at the Studio-Théâtre, in the Place des Arts in 2000. The producer André-Gilles Duchemin, who had already appreciated the music from Lecompte’s first album, decided to assist his new enterprise and enlisted Marc Bélanger, the conductor of Drummondville’s symphony orchestra. The show debuted the following year at the opening of the French-Ottawan cultural association hall in Gatineau.
Meanwhile, the entire company–the pianist-singer, the conductor, the dancers, the producer, and the Orchestra–are working to translate the spectacle onto disk, recording Hugo Live, which comprises 24 songs from nine collections of the writer, in autumn 2001, just in time for the bicentenary of Hugo’s birth in 1802.
In 2001, Lecompte opened the fifteenth Coup de cœur francophone in Montréal, with the same orchestra, under the direction of Marc Bélanger.
In 2002, he was proclaimed the grand prix winner of the song award Tout nouveau, tout chaud of Radio-Canada in Ottawa with the song Je mens, co-written with the author and performer Lise Boyer.
On December 27, 2003, the cultural channel of Radio-Canada in its program Chansons en liberté devoted an entire broadcast to Alain Lecompte and his show Hugo Live. This time Alain Lecompte was accompanied by a string quartet.
Since then, he has presented Hugo Live all over the world (Paris, Normandy, Valencia, New York, Puerto Rico, Aix en Provence, Cuba, Miami, Washington, Montréal, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Waterloo, Belgium.)
In 2007, at the invitation of the Ambassador of Canada, he presented the show with the Syrian youth symphony orchestra at the Opera of Damascus.
In the same year 2006, the French record label EPM Music, in its collection Poètes et chansons, released an album in hommage to Victor Hugo that gathered together a variety of francophone artists and on which one finds 11 of Lecompte’s songs.
At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2010, he performed the show as part of a colloquium devoted to Victor Hugo in exile.
In 2011, in order to commemorate the completion of the novel Les Misérables, Lecompte was invited to Waterloo, Belgium (the city where Hugo finished his celebrated novel), to give a recital.
In 2016, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the novel Les Travailleurs de la Mer, he presented the show in Guernsey accompanied by the women’s choir Bel Canto.
In the midst of touring his show, Lecompte recorded two albums for infants, released an instrumental CD, and participated as artist and/or composer in albums by Céline Faucher and Lise Boyer. He was co-arranger of Eva’s recent record, dedicated to Marlene Dietrich and presented in November 2015 on tour throughout Québec–an entirely new program of songs with his sidekick and friend, the comedian Claude Prégent.