Paulette Verlée releases Les Barricades Mystérieuses

Paulette Verlée, the alter ego of Veerle Pollet, learned to play the piano at a very young age with the works of Bach and Schumann. For her first album, released last year, it was Erik Satie who formed the starting point.

For her new album 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses' the inspiration came from François Couperin. Under the spell of his “leçons de ténèbres”, she first made her idiosyncratic piano version of “MEM”. Then created new, own work based on his somewhat funny and mysterious titles of his “pièces de clavecin”. The new album has become a refined collection of neoclassical music, with the recognizable touch of Paulette and this time with a musical wink to baroque music.

Not only Paulette was inspired by Couperin's wonderful titles. Painter René Magritte made no less than 2 works bearing the same title, 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses'. As a resident of Jette and great admirer of Magritte, she could not help but refer to him with the artwork of the album.

On stage, the piano is accompanied by well thought-out cello parts performed by Maaike Organe. This time the video footage projected behind them, comes largely from the Berlin film pioneer Walter Ruttmann. His abstract animation films from the 1920s fit in perfectly with Magritte's surrealistic image.

‘La Favorite, Chaconne’ is the album’s focus track and is an ode to J.S. Bach’s ‘Chaconne’: “I chose this title mostly because of its subtitle, chaconne,” Paulette shares. “When I was experimenting with the fast part, it reminded me inevitably of the famous chaconne by J.S. Bach. Naturally one is not to touch such a masterpiece, but through the use of the same title I wanted to express my admiration and love for this chef d'oeuvre.

With this record, Paulette Verlée delivers a worthy successor to “choses vues à droite et à gauche (sans lunettes)” that received airplay on Radio 1 and Klara. Nils Frahm also showed his enthusiasm and included the single 'Reprieve for Piano Solo' in his personal Spotify playlist. Recently, Paulette was in the spotlight with her personal rework of the song “11.10” by Sohnarr (the band around Patricia Vanneste, ex-violinist with Balthazar), alongside artists such as Chantal Acda, Brueder Selke, Justin Lockey and Ansatz Der Maschine.

With this record, Paulette Verlée delivers a worthy successor to “choses vues à droite et à gauche (sans lunettes)” that received airplay on Radio 1 and Klara. With singles "Reprieve", "For December", "Fine And You" and "Emergency".

Nils Frahm also showed his enthusiasm and included the single 'Reprieve for Piano Solo' in his personal Spotify playlist. Recently, Paulette was in the spotlight with her personal rework of the song “11.10” by Sohnarr (the band around Patricia Vanneste, ex-violinist with Balthazar), alongside artists such as Chantal Acda, Brueder Selke, Justin Lockey and Ansatz Der Maschine.