La Promesse Brel

For those who would have liked to applaud Jacques Brel

“There is still a little air of Brel ! ". This sentence that Arnaud Askoy has heard since his adolescence is not enough to promise the "return" of Jacques Brel on stage. It even sounds like a bad idea. Brel is unique and inimitable. Sure.
However, it was many skeptics, such as Pierre-Nicolas Clere, show producer and unconditional admirer of the great Jacques, or the musician and brilliant arranger Roland Romanelli (Barbara, Jean-Jacques Goldman etc.) who were going to be surprised when they came across the way of Arnaud one evening of concert. Simple and unexpected observation: it “stings”.
We did not have the chance to see Brel on stage during his lifetime, only a few images filmed in black and white. This is, both for fans and for the curious, a great frustration.
Much more than a repertoire, Brel is a silhouette, a gesture but also an implacable scenario, all charged with an incomparable emotional flame.
Arnaud Askoy met Brel by chance on the path of an atypical career. Indeed, after having been a police officer and then a private detective, he continued his literary work (5 collections published to date) and, alongside his new job as a singer, discovered painting. Self-taught, he exhibits today, notably in Paris. He is therefore a complete artist, a man of reflection who embarks on a real artistic challenge. As if it were a question of re-sculpting Brel to create a work in its own right.
The resemblance, certainly sometimes disturbing, the striking vocal imprint, but also the strict respect for the fundamental tools of Jacques Brel's staging are only physical elements of the show, the necessary decor.
Like the original arrangements of Roland Romanelli, it is indeed the personal flame of Arnaud Askoy, this emotional, intimate and generous charge, which must come to upset us, to give birth to a magic comparable to that of the time but well anchored in the present, like a living impressionist canvas.
This is the promise of the entire show team: “This is not Brel! Magritte would have said, but once that's said, let yourself go...