Elisapie Isaac

There will be Stars is the new work of Inuk singer, composer, filmmaker Elisapie Isaac. This, her first solo recording, is the much anticipated follow up to the internationally acclaimed, award winning duo Taima which she co-founded with guitarist / composer Alain Auger in 2001.

There will be Stars is not so much an album as a seduction from somewhere distant, somewhere otherworldly. Sometimes full of joy, sometimes lined with melancholy, at times pop, at times folk, at times sung poems from the north - is it Polar pop? Arctic Electric? New cool?

Elisapie Isaac was born of an Inuk mother and a Newfoundland father. She was adopted at birth by an Inuit family and was raised in the isolated community Salluit, Nunavik – the Great North.

For Elisapie, the north is not at the top of the world, it’s at the center of her world. “My grandfather used to say that to avoid getting lost”, Isaac says, “you always have to look where you've come from." "There Will be Stars” is a record that looks to where this artist has come from… here and now.

It has been said that the great singers are first and foremost great communicators. Elisapie Isaac’s life’s work has been communicating, first on radio, then on TV and then on film with her award winning National Film Board documentary “If the Weather Permits”.

She continues that tradition with There Will be Stars. A few listens in and you will start to realize that Isaac has a deep respect for both the profound and the party.

The songs on There Will Be Stars were incubated among friends. Poet / writer Frederic Gary Comeau offered encouragement to continue writing. Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas (The Besnard Lakes) produced the demos at Jace’s Break Glass studio. In return Elisapie taught Jace to sing in Inuktitut – which can be heard on “Inuk”. Singer, composer, bassist Martin Léon (www.martinleon.com), helped to make the songs the best they could be.

Recorded north of Montreal at L’Écurie (meaning “the stable”), There Will Be Stars came together organically; everyone on the floor at the same time, playing, singing, recording…encouraging each other, inspiring each other until each song was a “keeper”.

“Moi, Elsie” was written and composed by two of Elisapie’s heroes, Richard Desjardins and Pierre Lapointe. “Richard accepting to write for me is kind of like Shakespeare offering to write something I might like. And to have Pierre Lapointe put such beautiful music to such beautiful words, well I really felt, honoured, touched and frankly lucky!”

There Will Be Stars… the new record by Elisapie Isaac… a constellation of music from her universe.