Térez Montcalm, a Canadian jazz singer and guitarist born in Quebec, reached international audiences for the first time in 2007. Raised in a bilingual household where French and English mixed freely and music held a central place, she absorbed varied tastes from her family; her father, a Toronto native and English speaker, favored jazz figures such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Nat King Cole, while her older brothers gravitated toward Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa and her sisters toward the Beatles and Edith Piaf. As the youngest of five siblings, Montcalm also developed a strong personal affinity for Eurythmics frontwoman Annie Lennox. Displaying a remarkably powerful voice at a young age, she enrolled in music school during her teenage years and issued her first full-length album, Risque, on BMG in 1994. The record, largely in French and featuring both original songs and interpretations of material by Charles Aznavour, Tom Waits, and additional artists, earned favorable critical notices and brought her the Prix Rapsat-Lelièvre the following year. She next released Parle Pas Si Fort through Universal in 1997, after which she stepped away from recording for an extended period before returning with the self-titled Térez Montcalm in 2002. Her fourth album, Voodoo, marked a stylistic shift upon its 2006 arrival; consisting almost wholly of cover versions, including well-known tracks such as Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” and performed mainly in English, the set was produced by Michel Cusson, formerly the jazz-rock guitarist of Uzeb, and appeared on the Universal imprint GSI Musique. One year later Voodoo entered the French albums chart, where it spent 30 weeks and climbed to position 43.
