The lights go down and the wolf whistles come up. That's how Roch Voisine's London concert goes: Sophisticated staging and an audience not afraid to say what it's looking for.

Sporting a new, shorter haircut and dressed in a black suit and shiny black shoes, Voisine projected an image in the vein of Tom Jones.

He promised plenty of love songs and delivered to an audience largely made up of people in their 30s and 40s, with almost as many couples as groups of women friends.

 

The fair-sized francophone contingent was especially thrilled with Voisine's French songs.

The New Brunswick-born singer is one of the few French-speaking performers who has cracked this country's English speaking market.

Voisine was unfailingly polite, saying "Excuse me," to the audience before he picked up flowers from fans or even took a drink of water.

Backed by a seven-piece band, Voisine energetically sang many of his widely popular songs. Most were from his new album Kissing Rain -- after which this tour is named -- but he also performed material from earlier CDs.

Voisine also sang a tribute to his late manager Paul Vincent. He chose Starry Starry Night, a song about another man named Vincent, in this case Van Gogh.

 

Voisine called Vincent "my best friend, my big brother and my business manager."

 

His set earned a standing ovation and he sang two encores before the 80 per cent capacity audience at Alumni Hall.

In the end there was no need for the four muscled security guards in red shirts to keep the fans at bay.

DUET

The opening act was Toronto's Amy Sky, a long-time songwriter who only last year released an album of her own.

Voisine sang a duet in his show with Sky called All I Know, one of the songs she wrote with him on Kissing Rain.

It was not one of those thrown-together duets. Their voices matched well in quality and precision.

Sky's set was reminiscent of coffee-house days. She was backed only by another guitarist and a keyboardist, but her half-hour set also earned a standing ovation.

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