Kyra Shaughnessy

Fortement encouragée par sa récente tournée pancandienne en Ontario et dans les provinces de l'Ouest où elle a donné une quinzaine de spectacles réunissant les chansons de son premier album, Kyra Shaughnessy souhaite poursuivre dans cette même veine au Québec...

(for full text see link) - L'Écho de Frontenac

Les découvertes que l’on peut faire en assistant à un spectacle d’un nom parfaitement inconnu sont parfois très étonnantes. Kyra figure parmi ces découvertes.

Un courriel d’un ami m’informant qu’elle se produirait prochainement dans la petite ville où j’habite a suffi pour piquer ma curiosité. J’adore les surprises, vous le savez bien!

C’est alors que par ce beau soir d’hiver de février, je suis sortie voir Kyra Shaugnessy, une artiste de la relève, dont les origines sont indiennes. Elle a vécu son enfance dans un petit village estrien, près de la Beauce, puis son adolescence à Montréal. Elle est maintenant de retour dans son village natal, soit Audet.

Kyra chante entourée de quelques musiciens. Elle s’accompagne elle-même parfois d’une mandoline ou d’une guitare. Elle possède une voix discrète, juste et maîtrisée. Une voix qui s’inspire du blues, du jazz, du folk et du gospel même. Une jeune artiste chaleureuse, généreuse, qui nous entretient de ses réflexions sur les gens, la vie, le monde, entre chacune de ses pièces, avec une maturité désarmante, qui sort de l’ordinaire pour son âge, soit 23 ans.

Ses chansons reflètent ses réflexions, simples et profondes, en plus d’être imprégnées de fines particules de poésie qui flottent dans la salle comme de la poussière d’étoile durant tout le spectacle et que l’on a tendance à vouloir apporter dans nos poches en sortant. De fait, j’ai acheté le premier CD qu’elle avait produit.

Ajoutez à cela une présence sur scène à nous faire fondre sur place. Elle parle à son public, sans aucune prétention, d’un naturel impressionnant. Elle chante en français, en anglais et en espagnol. Elle enchaîne ses chansons sans qu’il n’y ait aucun agacement. Bien au contraire, le public en redemande. Sa musique est diversifiée, expressive, avec des textes, pour la plupart, engagés en même temps que poétiques.

Kyra possède un charisme rare, tout âge confondu. Son spectacle est comme un cri d’enfant à travers une vision adulte, une alerte à la réflexion, à la remise en question de notre société, et tout cela fait par la voix de la musique, par la voix de la non-violence, ce qui confère et à l’artiste et à son spectacle un charme à tout rompre!

Bref, un spectacle, beau « à mourir »… Il faut, bien sûr, comprendre « beau à vivre! ».

Un spectacle « beau à vivre! » - France Cliche

(translation)
Singer-Songwriter Kyra Shaughnessy communicates through the poetry of her work, across barriers of language, culture and religion...her reflections are like a mandala of wisdom.

She questions in order to understand and share the deep and indivisible unity that connects us all.
At the end of this quest is a better understanding of self, the earth that we inhabit...the discovering of "the other".
...
- Francine Nascivet

Kyra Shaughnessy is a prodigy. A miracle of nature. A happy blend of candour and maturity. She launched her first self-titled album the 17th of December to a public largely won over in advance. Doubtless the same can be said for those who discovered her for the first time at the Polyvalente Montignac that evening.

There is much poetry reflected in Kyra's work, citizen of a world that she sees without boundaries or prejudices. Most of her songs are written in English, her mother tongue, and sung in a smooth folk style. Beyond her warm and powerful voice, her songs caress the senses to the point of demanding more.

Kyra also composes skillfully in French.She grew up on a farm in the town of Audet, with mountains on every horizon, and ended up in Montreal during adolesecence. It was a difficult transition but also the source of much inspiration.
If Sparrow Song speaks of her deep need for nature in a place where her windows look out onto brick walls, Entrer en Ville reflects on the indifference of individuals[...] We're telling you all this to give an idea of the spirit of this artist of uncommon authenticity.

Amazing that a young woman of 23 could be so aware of the free choice posessed by all beings when there are so many structures that teach us to believe otherwise.Kyra incarnates the joy of living and existing on a planet that offers us millions of possibilities.
[...]
It was in all simplicity that Kyra addressed her public, going even so far as to laugh at her own discomfort on stage...this despite having completely charmed the audience for the entire evening. It was with equal humour that she performed the ritual "encore," that every artist plans in advance waiting only for their audiences applause. "What a funny game!" Proof that Kyra has retained the freshness of youth in addition to the generations old wisdom that inhabits her.

For the launch of her album, which we hope wll produce many siblings, Kyra was accompanied by Alexandre Maheux, Théo Forest Laplante, Simon Beausèjour, Edith Beausèjour, Marie-Pier Landry, Jean-Pierre Paradis and Gerry Aubut. - Écho de Frontenac (Lac-Mégantic, Québec)

Kyra Shaughnessy has a gift. No doubt she’s practiced and honed her performance, and she has worked on and thought about what she does, but she also completely lucked into That Voice.
Versatile, pliable, honey-sweet, with consonants that have just enough of a burr to suggest the organic quality of a vintage 30s recording.

The first time I saw Shaughnessy perform was at the ShapeShift tour at Collected Works in September. She opened with a piece of short prose from one of her zines - something about unrequited love - and while it was sweet and seemed endearingly innocent and honest, I wasn’t particularly blown away. Then she stood up and started a sung and spoken piece called “Take Me Away” and my jaw hit the floor. The first comparison to enter my head was Billie Holiday, and that’s still the closest I can come to the sweet, intimate quality of That Voice.

Shaughnessy’s CD, “As Children We Knew The World Truly,” is spare and gorgeous. Completely a capella, it moves between spoken and sung poetry. She hangs onto rhythm and pitch without backup music or any tricks, and her melodies are innovative without losing beauty. It’s one of the few completely a capella voice albums that I’ve listened to repeatedly in one day. “Take Me Away” is on the album, and for that alone it’s worth picking up. The sung hook line - “take me away / take me away / take me away, I wanna go back to the place I know / away, away, away-a-way-a-way, way-a hey, hey” - is so memorable and catchy that I caught myself singing it to myself as I was falling asleep that night. It takes a jazz riff, repeats it almost till it becomes a mantra, and then breaks off into something that echoes Native American chanting, if not blatantly, and then brings it back to that soft jazz croon.

Her spoken word poetry plays with the usual breaks, rhythms and rhymes, but as with the sung work it’s the jazzy, swingy sound of her voice that seduces. “And So It Was” is a song that wants you to fill in your own mental orchestration to go with the vivid images, “Lovers of QM & Economics Unite” picks up the tempo and gives her a chance to voice act as well, while “All babies are born (singing)” is a meditative, purely sung, piece that floats along on its own pace. - Free Range Print