Amplify Celebrates Turning 10 with Album Launch Party!

“The very first time I ever performed my original music in front of an audience was at an Amplify event,” Ange Moulaison-Doucette recalls.

It was an open mic: Moulaison-Doucette had been getting involved with Amplify through her photography, but music was “something that I kept to myself for quite a while.” There was something about the event’s atmosphere though, that gave her the push of confidence to play for her peers.

“It was just such a laid-back environment where people were just sharing what they had,” she continues. “It felt so low pressure that I was like, maybe this will be the time. And so I went up there and performed.”

Which, of course, led to many more performances, and Moulaison-Doucette isn’t the only one with a story like that. Amplify has been giving young St. Albert artists their very first opportunities for a full decade now. To celebrate that milestone, Amplify is releasing an album to call its own: 10 songs written and performed by Amplify artists as a celebration of that community and its impact over 10 years. The album’s being launched at a live listening party at The Arden, featuring both the album and live performances by its tracklist of artists.

Moulaison-Doucette, now a member of Amplify’s organizing committee, recalls the idea of an album beginning as one of many in a brainstorm.

“It seems like we've done every single type of creative project imaginable,” she says. “We've published two different books. We've had a fashion show, we've done so many crazy things. But I realized we've never made an album … We have a lot of concerts and things like that, but we've never recorded anything professionally.”

So Moulaison-Doucette pitched it. “An album” went up on the white board with all the other ideas, but “we kept talking about it,” she notes. “Then it became a reality.”

Amplify brought musicians from across its eras into a professional studio to record one track each—something they wouldn’t necessarily be able to do on their own.

“One of the main things with Amplify is taking young artists who are developing in their careers and giving them that type of experience,” Moulaison-Doucette says. “A lot of them don't have the funds to get in the studio.

“When I was younger and I would go to Amplify events, there would be all of these professional stuff,” she continues. “I just thought ‘This is so cool. This is what I wanna do with my life.’ That type of experience is so special, and such an Amplify-type of thing.”

Moulaison-Doucette’s own offering for the album, “Life is Better on TV” is a clever, heartfelt ode to the differences between expectations and reality. For her, it felt like a fitting inclusion.

“A lot of the experiences that I talk about in the song are things that coincided with Amplify as I grew up,” she says. “I think that was a very relevant song to have on the 10th anniversary album.”

Article written by: Paul Blinov

The Amplify Album release is happening Wednesday, November 8th at the Arden at 7pm.

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