L’Equipe Spectra also operated important and mythic venues in Montreal: Spectrum from 1982 for 25 years, Théâtre Outremont (1994-2011), Théâtre Olympia (1990-2004) and still, the magnificient Metropolis and L’Astral. Throughout his major roles as a co-founder and artistic director Le Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, André Ménard as first VP of L’Équipe Spectra was mainly overseeing the venues. This allowed him to invest himself in another of his passion: concerts hall and clubs, the spaces where everything begins and everything is possible.
Ménard was associated with ADISQ, the Quebec music industry organization, from 1980 to 1993 and also served as its president from 1989 to 1991, years that he describes as “among the most active and instructive of my professional life.” He also sat on the board of directors of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montréal from 1992 to 1994. From June 2005 to December 2008, he sat on the board of directors of the Jazz Alliance International (JAI) and and now on International Jazz Festivals Organisation which gathers the major players in the field.. From 2001 to 2009, he was also on the board of directors of the Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois. Since 1995, he has been a member of the board of directors of the dance company La La La Human Steps.
He has also been a member of the board of directors of the Partenariat du Quartier des Spectacles since its founding in 2003. Indeed, he is the man behind the original idea of a “Quartier des Théâtres de Montréal,” a concept picked up and expounded for the first time during a speech by Alain Simard at the Chamber of Commerce in the late ’90s.
Ménard is the recipient of a number of international awards and honours, including:
- The first Hall of Fame Award, conferred by National Jazz Awards Canada (2004)
- Winner of the Prix Reconnaissance conferred by RIDEAU (2003)
- Winner of the Events Producer of the year conferred by the Jazz Journalist Association (2002)
- Personality of the Week, La Presse (2001)
- Chevalier (Knight) des Arts et lettres de la République française (1993)
- Personality of the Week, La Presse (1988)
He remains one of the defining figures on the Québec cultural scene, and is probably attending a concert somewhere as you read this.
Biography – Alain Simard
One of the pioneers and leaders of the Quebec music industry, Alain Simard has been a builder of our culture for nearly 50 years, and a founding member of ADISQ. His passionate work has contributed to the development and professionalization of our cultural industry and has generated extraordinary artistic, social, economic and touristic benefits for Montreal.
The 18-year-old festival organizer
In 1968, he opened a student café, La Clef (with Pierre Huet), and organized pop festivals, especially in Paul-Sauvé Arena, McGill University, Gesù and Comédie-Canadienne, with the first Québécois underground bands, such as Nécessité, The Haunted, Blues Expédition (with Jean Millaire), Someone (with Gilles Valiquette), Higgan’s Hill, La Famille Casgrain (with Michel Rivard), Les Sinners, L’Infonie (with Walter Boudreau and Raôul Duguay), as well as with American bluesman Paul Wyner, the bands Seeds of Time from Vancouver and The Deviants from London.
The trail-blazing promoter
Within the hippie community of Productions Kosmos in 1971, he was the first to present shows by British groups Genesis, Gentle Giant, Pink Floyd and Procol Harum in Quebec premieres (in the Université de Montréal Sports Centre, which he was the first to use as a venue). He co-produced with Donald K. Donald in 1975 the show Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd in the Autostade. At the time, he and Denyse McCann dreamed of creating a yearly jazz festival in Montreal.
Also with Kosmos, he initiated the midnight shows in Cinéma Outremont (with Chuck Mangione, Oregon, Pollen, John Lee Hooker, Bruce Cockburn, Donovan), while Paul Dupont-Hébert was presenting francophone artists. He joined forces with the latter in Productions Beaubec to present in May 1977 Harmonium’s L’Heptade three nights in CEPSUM, as part of their only arena tour.
He then founded Spectra Scène (which would become L’Équipe Spectra in 1992) with André Ménard and Denyse McCann, with whom he launched in 1978 Cinéma Saint-Denis as a venue every Thursday in between films (with B.B. King, Offenbach en Fusion, Peter Tosh, Plume and the Beau Dommage farewell concert), followed by El Casino club and soon the legendary Spectrum de Montréal in 1983. He is also the man behind the transformation of the Métropolis (formerly a nightclub) into a venue in 1997, and the renovation and reopening of the Théâtre Outremont in 2001.
The artist agent and manager
Alain Simard was also the personal manager of Claude Dubois, Offenbach, Paul Piché, Michel Rivard, Beau Dommage, Louise Forestier, Jim Corcoran, Carole Laure, Jean Leloup, Bran Van 3000. He was a producer and agent for Zachary Richard, Harmonium, RBO, Daniel Bélanger, Ariane Moffat, Laurence Jalbert, Marjo, Stefie Shock, Natalie Choquette, Cirque Éloize, Champion et ses G-Strings, Vincent Vallières, Susie Arioli and Catherine Major. He also locally represented Pat Metheny, John Lee Hooker, Bruce Cockburn, Catherine Lara, Jean-Luc Ponty, Jacques Higelin and Artuhr H, Paolo Conte, Michel Fugain, Grand Corps Malade, etc.
The record producer
In 1978, he launched the Spectra label distributed by CBS with gold-certified vinyl records by Offenbach and Claude Dubois, and Oliver Jones and Vic Vogel’s first albums. In 1985, he co-founded with Michel Bélanger and Rosaire Archambault Audiogram discs, of which he was the main shareholder and president until 1992, when he resold his actions, while L’Équipe Spectra remained the only owner of the famous Studio Morin Heights. Alain Simard went on being the producer of several significant albums by artists including Michel Rivard, Jean Leloup and Beau Dommage (with the double-platinum Échappé belle). He then created Spectra Musique, one of the largest record labels today, which produces albums by Vincent Vallières, Richard Séguin, Michel Rivard, Catherine Major, Zachary Richard, Daniel Lavoie, Susie Arioli, Patrice Michaud and Philippe Brach.
The large show producer
Alain Simard was the first to introduce a Quebec francophone band as a featured artist in the Forum with Offenbach on April 3, 1980. He then presented the Québec Rock tour, the closing ceremony of the 350th anniversary of Montreal, the unexpected return of Beau Dommage for two nights in 1984 (repeated in 1994), Oscar Peterson with Charles Dutoit, B.B. King and many others at the Bell Centre, and some spectacular shows with the OSM featuring music from The Red Violin and Lord of the Rings.
He is also the organizer of the very successful night carnival parade opening the 350th anniversary of Montreal, and of the Parc des Îles opening show in 1992, the producer of several musical shows such as Romeo and Juliet, L’Homme de la Mancha, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Le Chant de Sainte Carmen de la Main, of the spectacular Rock et Belles Oreilles tours, as well as the Rain co-production with Cirque Éloize. In Paris, Alain Simard produced dozens of shows in L’Olympia, Bataclan and La Cigale, especially with Michel Rivard, Carole Laure, Beau Dommage and Jean Leloup.
The television producer
In 1979, he created one of our first independent television production companies: Spectel Video (with Daniel Harvey and Pierre Roy), to which we owe hundreds of musical performance recordings (broadcasted in multitrack stereo), the very first Québécois music videos coproduced by the NFB, and the legendary Rock et Belles Oreilles television series. In the 90s, L’Équipe Spectra acquired Sogestalt and Amérimage television companies from Guy Latraverse and Pierre Touchette, becoming the largest cultural and musical television producer in Canada, and presenting special programs on CBC and Radio-Canada with Oscar Peterson, Diana Krall, the OSM, La La La Human Steps and Cirque du Soleil. In 2001, he was a co-founder of ARTV cultural channel. Spectra later sold its shares to CBC television and all its subsidiaries to Echo Media (property of his former associate Luc Châtelain).
The man of culture
He also had the chance to work with directors Robert Lepage, François Girard, Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon, René Richard Cyr, Daniele Finzi Pasca, Lorraine Pintal, Mouffe, Brigitte Poupart, Serge Denoncourt, Dominic Champagne and Lewis Furey, as well as choreographers Edouard Lock, Marie Chouinard, Maurice Béjart and Eddy Toussaint. In classical music, Alain Simard has worked extensively with the OSM and his friends Charles Dutoit and Alain Lefèvre, as well as with Barbara Hendricks, Joshua Bell, José Carreras, Natalie Choquette, Howard Shore, Jessye Norman, Angèle Dubeau, John Corigliano, Marie-Josée Lord and Louis Lortie. He notably initiated this year’s historic reunion of Charles Dutoit with the OSM, with Martha Argerich on the piano.
Alain Simard, whose father studied Fine arts, has also worked in the visual arts field, organizing exhibitions and printing art silkscreens by Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alfred Pellan, Marcel Barbeau, Corno, Armand Vaillancourt, Zïlon, Miyuki Tanobe, Diane Dufresne, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Tony Bennett and Frédéric Back. He was the first to offer Montrealers giant “projection mapping” and interactive multimedia works in the early 2000s as part of MEL, with Michael Snow, Jimmy Lakatos and Michel Lemieux.
The inventor of the Montreal free festivals
Alain Simard is best known internationally for being the creator and the president-founder of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (in 1979 with André Ménard and Denyse McCann), of the FrancoFolies de Montréal (in 1989 with Guy Latraverse and Jean-Louis Foulquier) and of the MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE festival in 1999, all NPOs characterized by an important free outdoor program which overall generates each year over $100 million in tourism benefits for the city of Montreal. In 2003, he launched (with Michel Labrecque) the first Nuit blanche in North America, which is still today the event that attracts the most participants in a single day in Montreal.
On June 30, 2009, he finally realized his dream with the opening of the Maison du Festival, a seven-floor building in which can be discovered free of charge the small Festival museum, the press room/art gallery, public archives, the Balmoral bistro and L’Astral, a venue of which he personally designed the layout. At the same time, to celebrate the Festival’s 30th edition, he presented Stevie Wonder in the opening show of the new Place des Festivals, of which he was the original ideaman, having claimed it since 1999 from the various levels of government.
Moreover, his idea of a “festival belt” in public places around the PDA, which he has been suggesting since 2006 to Mayor Tremblay and Premier Charest (supported by PQDS and the ADISQ in 2007) has been fully included in the PPU for the development of the western part of the Quartier des spectacles. Politically, Alain Simard met all the mayors of Montreal since Jean Drapeau, all Premiers of Quebec since René Lévesque, all Premiers of Canada since Brian Mulroney, Emperor Akihito of Japan and Presidents Mitterrand and Chirac of France.
In addition to L’Équipe Spectra, its subsidiaries and festivals of which he was CEO, Alain Simard has long served on the boards of directors of ADISQ, of Tourisme Montreal, the Institut québécois du cinéma, PQDS, ARTV , REMI, FAME and X3 Production, as well as community organizations such as the Institut des troubles d’apprentissage.
In 2013, after two years of discussions, he sold along with his associated L’Équipe Spectra’s shares to Geoff Molson, who committed to continue the cultural mission of the famous company, now a separate subsidiary within CH Group.
This year, at age 66, Alain Simard takes a well-deserved retirement, as part of a transition planned for five years. Jacques-André Dupont, his collaborator and friend for 27 years, has just succeeded him as CEO of L’Équipe Spectra and of the three festivals he founded. He is also very proud of his daughter Catherine Simard, who has been leading Spectra Music for three years as Vice-President. Biography – Alain Simard
One of the pioneers and leaders of the Canadian and Quebec music industry, Alain Simard has been a builder of our culture for nearly 50 years, and a founding member of ADISQ. His passionate work has contributed to the development and professionalization of our cultural industry and has generated extraordinary artistic, social, economic and touristic benefits for Montreal.
The 18-year-old festival organizer
In 1968, he opened a concert café, La Clef, and organized pop festivals, especially in Paul-Sauvé Arena, McGill University, Gesù and Comédie-Canadienne, with the first Québécois underground bands, such as The Haunted, Blues Expédition (with Jean Millaire), Someone (with Gilles Valiquette), Higgan’s Hill, La Famille Casgrain (with Michel Rivard), Les Sinners, L’Infonie (with Walter Boudreau and Raôul Duguay), as well as with American bluesman Paul Wyner, the bands Seeds of Time from Vancouver and The Deviants from London.
The trail-blazing promoter
Within the hippie community of Productions Kosmos in 1971, he was the first to present shows in Canada by British groups Genesis and Gentle Giant, and Quebec premieres of Pink Floyd and Procol Harum (in the Université de Montréal Sports Centre, which he was the first to use as a venue). He co-produced with Donald K. Donald in 1975 the show Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd in the Autostade. At the time, he and Denyse McCann already dreamed of creating a yearly jazz festival in Montreal.
Also with Kosmos, he initiated the midnight shows in Cinéma Outremont (with Chuck Mangione, Oregon, John Lee Hooker, Bruce Cockburn, Donovan), while Paul Dupont-Hébert was presenting francophone artists. He joined forces with the latter in Productions Beaubec to present in May 1977 Harmonium’s L’Heptade three nights in CEPSUM, as part of their only arena tour he also produced with André Menard.
He then founded Spectra Scène (which would become L’Équipe Spectra in 1992) with André Ménard and Denyse McCann, with whom he launched in 1978 Cinéma Saint-Denis as a venue every Thursday in between films (with B.B. King, Offenbach en Fusion, Peter Tosh, Plume and the Beau Dommage farewell concerts), followed by El Casino club and soon the legendary Spectrum de Montréal in 1983. He is also the man behind the transformation of the Métropolis (formerly a nightclub) into a venue in 1997, and the renovation and reopening of the Théâtre Outremont in 2001.
The artist agent and manager
Alain Simard was also the personal manager of Claude Dubois, Offenbach, Paul Piché, Michel Rivard, Beau Dommage, Louise Forestier, Jim Corcoran, Carole Laure, Jean Leloup, Bran Van 3000. He was a producer and agent for Zachary Richard, Harmonium, RBO, Daniel Bélanger, Ariane Moffat, Laurence Jalbert, Marjo, Stefie Shock, Natalie Choquette, Cirque Éloize, Champion et ses G-Strings, Vincent Vallières, Susie Arioli and Catherine Major. He also locally represented Pat Metheny, John Lee Hooker, Bruce Cockburn, Catherine Lara, Jean-Luc Ponty, Jacques Higelin and Artuhr H, Paolo Conte, Michel Fugain, Grand Corps Malade, etc.
The record producer
In 1978, he launched the Spectra label distributed by CBS with gold-certified vinyl records by Offenbach and Claude Dubois, and Oliver Jones and Vic Vogel’s first albums. In 1985, he co-founded with Michel Bélanger and Rosaire Archambault Audiogram Records, of which he was the main shareholder and president until 1992, when he sold his shares to his two partners, while L’Équipe Spectra remained the only owner of the famous Studio Morin Heights. Alain Simard went on being the producer of several significant albums by artists including Michel Rivard, Jean Leloup and Beau Dommage (with the double-platinum Échappé belle). He then created Spectra Musique, one of the largest record labels today, which produces albums by Vincent Vallières, Richard Séguin, Michel Rivard, Catherine Major, Daniel Lavoie, Susie Arioli, Patrice Michaud and Philippe Brach.
The special events producer
Alain Simard was the first to introduce a Quebec francophone act as a featured artist in the Forum with Offenbach on April 3, 1980. He also produced in that venue the Québec Rock tour, the closing ceremony of the 350th anniversary of Montreal, the unexpected return of Beau Dommage for two nights in 1984 (repeated in 1994), Oscar Peterson with Charles Dutoit/OSM, B.B. King and many others later at the Bell Centre, including some spectacular multimedia events with the OSM featuring music from The Red Violin and Lord of the Rings.
He is also the producer of the very successful Night carnival parade opening the 350th anniversary of Montreal and the opening shows of the Parc des Îles in 1992, of several Quebec touring musicals such as Romeo and Juliet, L’Homme de la Mancha, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Le Chant de Sainte Carmen de la Main, and of the popular comedy shows of Rock et Belles Oreilles, as well as the Rain co-production with Cirque Éloize. In Paris, Alain Simard produced dozens of shows in L’Olympia, Bataclan and La Cigale, especially with Michel Rivard, Carole Laure, Beau Dommage and Jean Leloup.
The television producer
In 1979, he created one of our first independent television production companies: Spectel Video (with Daniel Harvey and Pierre Roy), to which we owe hundreds of musical performance recordings (broadcasted in multitrack stereo), the very first Québécois music videos coproduced by the NFB, and the legendary Rock et Belles Oreilles television series. In the 90s, L’Équipe Spectra acquired Sogestalt and Amérimage television companies from Guy Latraverse and Pierre Touchette, becoming one of the largest cultural and musical television producer in Canada, and presenting special programs on CBC and Radio-Canada with Oscar Peterson, Diana Krall, the OSM, La La La Human Steps and Cirque du Soleil. In 2001, he was a co-founder of ARTV cultural channel. Spectra later sold its shares to CBC television and all its subsidiaries to Echo Media (property of his former associate Luc Châtelain).
The man of culture
In the course of its carreer, he had the chance to work with directors Robert Lepage, François Girard, Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon, René Richard Cyr, Daniele Finzi Pasca, Lorraine Pintal, Dominic Champagne and Lewis Furey, as well as choreographers Edouard Lock, Marie Chouinard, Maurice Béjart and Eddy Toussaint. In classical music, Alain Simard has worked extensively with the OSM and his friends Charles Dutoit and Alain Lefèvre, as well as with Barbara Hendricks, Joshua Bell, José Carreras, Natalie Choquette, Howard Shore, Jessye Norman, Angèle Dubeau, John Corigliano, Marie-Josée Lord and Louis Lortie. He notably initiated this year’s historic reunion of Charles Dutoit with the OSM, with Martha Argerich on the piano.
Alain Simard, whose father studied Fine arts, has also worked in the visual arts field, organizing exhibitions and printing art silkscreens by Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alfred Pellan, Marcel Barbeau, Corno, Armand Vaillancourt, Zïlon, Miyuki Tanobe, Diane Dufresne, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Tony Bennett and Oscar winning Frédéric Back. He was the first to offer Montrealers giant “video mapping” projections and interactive multimedia works in the early 2000s as part of MEL, with conceptors like Michael Snow, Jimmy Lakatos and Michel Lemieux.
The inventor of the Montreal free festivals formula
Alain Simard is best known internationally for being the creator and the president-founder of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (in 1979 with André Ménard and Denyse McCann), of the FrancoFolies de Montréal (in 1989 with Guy Latraverse and Jean-Louis Foulquier) and of the MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE festival in 1999, all NPOs characterized by an important free outdoor program which overall generates each year over $100 million in tourism benefits for the city of Montreal. In 2003, he launched (with Michel Labrecque) the first Nuit blanche in North America, which is still today the event that attracts the most participants in a single day in Montreal.
On June 30, 2009, he finally realized his dream with the opening of the Maison du Festival, a seven-floor building in which can be discovered free of charge the small Festival museum, the press room/art gallery, its public archives, the Balmoral bistro and L’Astral, a venue of which he personally designed the layout. At the same time, to celebrate the Festival’s 30th edition, he presented a giant free concert of Stevie Wonder to a crowd of 200,000 also serving as the opening show of the new Place des Festivals, of which he was the original ideaman, having claimed it since 1999 from the various levels of government.
Moreover, his idea of a “festival belt” of several public places around Place des Arts, which he has been suggesting since 2006 to Mayor Tremblay and Premier Charest (supported by PQDS and the ADISQ in 2007) has been fully included in the Urban Program for the development of the western part of the Quartier des spectacles. Politically, Alain Simard met all the mayors of Montreal since Jean Drapeau, all Premiers of Quebec since René Lévesque, all Premiers of Canada since Brian Mulroney (Justin Trudeau still to be met…), Emperor Akihito of Japan and Presidents Mitterrand and Chirac of France.
In addition to L’Équipe Spectra, its subsidiaries and festivals of which he was CEO, Alain Simard has long served on the boards of directors of ADISQ, of Tourisme Montreal, the Institut québécois du cinéma, PQDS, ARTV , REMI, FAME and X3 Production, as well as community organizations such as the Institut des troubles d’apprentissage.
In 2013, after two years of discussions, he sold along with his pattners L’Équipe Spectra’s shares to Geoff Molson, who committed to continue the cultural mission of the famous company, now a separate subsidiary within CH Group.
This year, at age 66, Alain Simard takes a well-deserved retirement, as part of a transition planned for five years. Jacques-André Dupont, his collaborator and friend for 27 years, has just succeeded him as CEO of L’Équipe Spectra and of the three festivals he founded. He is also very proud of his daughter Catherine Simard, who has been leading Spectra Music for three years as Vice-President.
About Canadian Music Week
Canadian Music Week is Canada’s leading annual entertainment event dedicated to the expression and growth of the country’s music, media and entertainment industries. Combining three information-intensive conferences; a trade exposition; a film festival; a comedy festival; four awards shows and the nation’s largest new music festival, CMW spans a ten-day period from May 4 to May 14, 2016 at the Sheraton Centre Hotel and over 50 downtown Toronto venues, attracting participants from across the globe. For more information, visit www.cmw.net.