Montreal In Pictures

June 07 2012

Following on from the earlier post today covering the F1 street festivals on Peel and Crescent, I now jump into coverage of the opening night of the FrancoFolies festival that took place last night. The 24th edition of the French music festival had Pierre Lapointe headlining and I’m a big fan of his music, so this was a great start to the festival. He was on stage at around 9.30, but I got there early to check out the 3 warm-up acts.

First up, Les Revenants a mix of country/folk and rock.

Les Revenants at the 2012 FrancoFolies

Next, a great band from France, Dionysos. This group really got the crowd buzzing with their energetic performance and music.

Dionysos at the 2012 FrancoFolies

Base player from Les Remenants checking out Dionysos

Dionysos at the 2012 FrancoFolies

Student supporter in the crowd

Dionysos at the 2012 FrancoFolies

Dionysos after show signing for fans

Next on the Ford stage was Daran also from France. With it getting dark and to maintain a reasonably high shutter speed, I had to move the ISO up (4000), so the images start to get a little grainy 🙁

Daran at the 2012 FrancoFolies

The crowds had been gradually building through the evening in anticipation for Pierre Lapointe’s show. Unfortunately, not long after coming on stage the rain started. I hung around to get some shots (and more importantly enjoy his great music), but after about 30-45 minutes decided to call it a night for fear of water damage to my new camera 🙁

I was mainly shooting with my 70-300mm lens, but with the ISO jacked up to the maximum 25600 ISO for some, the quality is not that great unfortunately for Pierre Lapointe’s performance.

Pierre Lapointe at 2012 FrancoFolies

I have to mention that the students have been threatening to disrupt or at least use the festivals and Grand Prix as a way to get their message heard. There was apparently some incidents downtown concerning the Grand Prix launch party with heavy police presence, together on Sainte Catherine street near Crescent with arrests being made.

To begin, it seemed like the only disturbance at the Francofolies was the constant drone from the police helicopter above that was following the protesters further west.

The drone of the Police Helicopter competing with the music

Hoever, during Pierre Lapointe’s performance, probably around 50 or so demonstrators were able to get through security somehow and made a little noise, shed their clothes and took a bath in the fountain at Place des Arts, banged some pans and then left. Seemed like they got a mixed reaction from the festival attendees.

Student demonstrators converge on the FrancoFolies festival

Given how long this post has stretched to, I’m glad I split today’s images into 2 separate posts. Just to finish up (I still need to go out and shoot today’s picture/s), here are a couple of random shots around the FrancoFolies festival site.