June 23, 1997
Roch in top form

Roch Voisine seems like the perfect choice for a festival headliner.

Especially when it's the Festival Franco-Ontarien, which celebrates the spirit of francophone culture within this province.

Voisine was indeed a good choice, because he's one of those special Canadian artists who typifies the sort of entertainment that's possible when you not only combine, but extoll the virtues of both official languages in your performance.

Of course, Voisine certainly kept his program last night heavily weighted with the more familiar French side of his extensive discography. But he didn't hesitate to throw in several English and bilingual songs to add a little variety, and show that while celebrating one culture it's also perfectly natural to spotlight other languages and feelings that have made you what you are as an artist and a person.

Voisine's never been one to shy away from a solid, entertaining package on stage, and last night he brought along a solid band of eight to beef up the show -- even adding the explosive backup of Amy Sky to give his songs a little punch.

SOLID HOUR

He turned in a solid hour show plus a couple of encores, and did his usual foray into a myriad of styles and feelings to give the show some variety.

That's probably what allows Voisine to command such a varied audience.

He'll flit from Cajun fiddles to straight-ahead rock to pure pop power ballads to the odd foray into pure acoustics.

Combine that with Voisine's poster boy image, and you can see why the fans were dancing on the grass, on their chairs and even the picnic tables.

If there was a knock on the program it was that it took too long to get underway, and seemed a tad short.

The Festival Franco-Ontarien continues tonight at Festival Plaza with events beginning at 6 p.m. -- including a tribute to the French community in Belgium.

For information, call 292-FRANCO.

SUN RATING: 3 OUT OF 5