Quand on aime on a toujours 20 ans!

As Jean-Pierre Ferland put it in his song, Quand on aime on a toujours 20 ans!
| When youte in love, youre twenty all over again!
i
20 is the age of love and youth. So now that the Vancouver Festival dété
| francophone is turning 20, we will stay in tune with the times and will celebrate
| under the banner of youth. For our 20th anniversary, we wanted to bring you the
_ most brilliant performers on the contemporary francophone music scene, and
| it just turns out that this line-up of artists is very young indeed! With Malajube,
| Karkwa and Pierre Lapointe, we have a trilogy of stars who are the new emissaries
of the very best on the North American music scene. They have made their mark
thanks to their creativity, originality and a world of sound that is unique to each
_ of them. These qualities are so entrenched that, in spite of their youth, we can
already talk about an ceuvre-a mature corpus of work-that they bring to their
audiences.

Our 20th anniversary gala performance will without a doubt be a memorable
event in the history of francophone music in British Columbia. We would be amiss
if we did not express our gratitude to our new partner, Air Canada, which has
made it possible to bring such an enticing line-up onstage for this evening

The Festival dété will continue with its commitment to promoting the creation
of francophone music from diverse origins, especially British Columbian and
Western Canadian artists who have made their mark over the past year. This
includes Arianne Mahnyke Lemire, a Franco-Albertan whose first aloum just won
the ‘Best francophone album’ prize in the Western Canadian Music Awards, and
Mimosa, a Vancouver group of international renown that also released a new
album this year.

Of course we have something for the children too, with a show by Will Stroet in a
French immersion school. Will is also the proud father of a new album for young
audiences. In addition, seven of our artists have joined forces to bring us a musical
fairy tale, “The Little Match Girl’

And all that will wind up with a rejuvenating party on June 24 for St. Jean Baptiste
day. We won't forget for a minute what is was like to be 20!

Pierre Rivard, Executive and Artistic Director
Jocelyne Lawson, President