The mirador was in a basement in Nicolet. Jean-Michel Blais built it as a child, an imaginary lookout in the family house, a place to sit and watch a world he had not reached yet. He was a young musician living with Tourette syndrome and working out that he was queer. The lookout was a refuge and it was also a vantage point.
That is where the Montreal pianist and composer’s fourth album gets its name, and on September 3 he released its title track. “mirador” runs 5:43. It opens on breath and the pulse of a choir before the piano arrives, and the melody then moves among the voices, which gather, drop away and return until they and the piano are the same thing.
The track follows “ulysse” and “carnavalito” as the third piece released from the record. The full album arrives September 25 on Arts & Crafts, distributed by Universal, with Blais producing.
mirador is an album shaped by childhood, by invented worlds, and by the places people build in order to look at things from a distance. Blais wrote and produced it himself.
A 2026–27 tour follows, with dates listed at jeanmichelblais.com/tour.
Blais has spent a decade making a particular kind of case for the piano in Montreal, one that has less to do with the concert hall than with the room where the instrument actually sits. II in 2016, Dans ma main in 2018, aubades in 2022, each one further from solo piano than the last and each one still recognisably his. mirador extends that, this time with voices carrying the weight the strings carried on aubades.
Photo credit: Adrian Villagomez
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