Luc Beauséjour: “Music is an extension of emotion.”

Guitarist, organist and music director for Clavecin en Concert, an event in which he prepares to give his last concert of the season, takes time to remember his cinematic feelings…

Luke, what are your first memories of cinema?

I don’t remember exactly…it was probably the drive…I’m from a generation that was a kid in the ’60s. There were films such as “Ben-Hur” or “The Melody of Happiness”, it is ambiguous. I remember the movies, some pictures, the sound, but it’s blurry. I can’t see the first movie theater.

Your first great movie?

Spontaneously, these are pictures of the “melody of happiness”, the mountains, the song. The songs are what set me apart, I think we sang them in elementary school. […] We had a piano in my parents’ house, so I guess I subconsciously knew I wanted to be a pianist. I always played by ear, I played melodies. Do Re Mi? I did this with a finger. The landscape was very beautiful.

and newer?

I really like Pedro Almodovar’s movies. His favorite is “Talk to Her” and a few years have passed. It was the movie that made me cry. Movies are like concerts, they depend on our state of mind, on how we perceive things at a particular moment in our existence.

What is the movie’s music for you?

I find movie music very important. Music is an extension of the image, of emotion. Music amplifies everything. The picture has an objective aspect, as soon as the music is present, it “makes it subjective”. The power of music is incredible.

Movie music that knocks you down?

As a musician, the greatest achievement is “Amadeus”. When Mozart dictates “Requiem” to Salieri, he does so as a voice. Hear, see building music. We hear the result as dictated by it and it comes together at the end. It is a nice. What a good movie! What a beautiful movie!

A movie you want to play on music?

Quite frankly, all the films that talk about music, whether it’s “All the Mornings in the World” or “La passion d’Augustine”, touch me. What would you put to the music? I do not know. But I would have picked a Quebec movie, that’s for sure!

The movie you couldn’t watch until the end?

In fact, these are movies that are shown so late at night on Radio Canada that I had to sleep. Unfortunately, the movie has been discontinued. In that sense, I didn’t manage to finish a movie. I probably got out of the cinema once because the movie wasn’t going anywhere. I don’t remember…maybe because the movie wasn’t worth remembering.

The movie or movie world you would like to live in?

I seem to be going back to the past, but I’d like to go back to the films of Louis de Funes. It must be very funny. These days, the world is not very happy and we don’t always have good news… Back in the time, when we could have fun without a gray cloud over our head.