La Famille LeBlanc of New Brunswick performs French Acadian music, this time with the 20-member YTV Touring Group. The Touring Group’s performance will include material learned on their week-long April tour of Cape Breton, which will have concluded just days before the festival.
This concert will also be livestreamed and recorded. By purchasing an all-festival ticket, you will also get access to the livestream link.
La Famille LeBlanc: The LeBlanc family is a musical family of at least 6 generations. Today, Robin LeBlanc, accompanied by his wife and his three girls, perpetuate this tradition. Fallen in the soup at their birth, the three LeBlanc sisters step dance (a rhythmic dance performed with the feet) to the sound of their fathers’ fiddle (violin) who plays tunes played by his great-great grandfather. Charlotte, the eldest, plays the violin, Rosalie plays the concertina and accompanies her sister at the piano and Mélodie tops it up with her feet work and whistle. There mother harmonizes her voice to theirs while interpreting many of the oldest Acadian-French ballads. To the rhythm of the music, “La famille LeBlanc” will make you dance to her calls for a true Acadian kitchen party experience.
The 2022-23 Touring Group.
YTV Touring Group: The Touring Group is a group of 20 teen players, singers and dancers who learn and perform traditional music, song and dance together for 9 months, leading up to a trip and performing tour in April, and culminating with their participation in the Young Tradition Festival in May.
The 2022-23 Touring Group Assist Leaders are Hadley Stockwell and Owen Kennedy and this year’s Tour is to Cape Breton. We look forward to hearing and seeing some of what they learned in their travels incorporated into their Festival performances.
The Young Tradition Festival is a celebration of multi-generational relationships from traditional music and dance communities. Children, youth and young adults are the focus, along with those who support them as teachers, mentors, friends, and families.
The theme for the 2023 festival is "family songs, tunes, and dances," highlighting material inspired by families, learned within and from families, and performed and shared by families. In keeping with the theme, this year’s festival hosts are La Famille LeBlanc.
The Festival is presented by Vermont Folklife, with support from Burlington City Arts, Church Street Marketplace, North Country Federal Credit Union, Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain Region, the Windjammer Inn & Conference Center, the Nelson Family Foundation, the Turrell Fund, the Vermont Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and others.
Email ytv@vtfolklife.org with questions.