S
GINETTE RENO & THE QUEBEC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AT QUEBEC CITY’S VIDEOTRON CENTRE
AN
ICON
ORCHESTRA
&
A SPECIAL
GINETTE RENO
PERFORMANCE IN
QUEBEC CITY
BY ANDREW KING
34 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
imply put, Ginette Reno is a Canadian icon.
As such, it’s not unusual for the platinum-selling sing-
er, composer, author, and actress to perform in packed
hockey arenas throughout her home province of Quebec.
While those arenas are typically full of loyal fans intimate-
ly familiar with the artist’s heralded catalog of nearly 30
studio albums and over 50 total releases in both English
and French, in recent years, they’ve also seen her belting
out the national anthem for the always-capacity Bell Cen-
tre crowd during Montreal Canadiens playoff games as
the team’s unofficial “lucky charm.”
When Reno took the stage at Quebec City’s Videotron Centre in November
2017, though, it was for a very special one-off performance with a very special
guest – or, rather, 57 very special guests: the Symphonic Orchestra of Quebec.
What’s more, it was Pascalin Raynault – Reno’s son and an accomplished artist in
his own right – conducting for the evening.
While the Videotron Centre can host over 20,000 spectators when its bowl is
configured for a concert, only 8,000 tickets were available for this intimate evening,
dubbed Ginette Reno Symphonique.
The audio package deployed for the performance was supplied by Montreal’s
Omnison and the product of a collaboration between the artist’s longtime FOH
engineer, Sylvain Gingras, and monitor engineer, Pierre Du Berger. Despite both
being