Alexandra Stréliski

Alexandra Stréliski announces that Néo-Romance, the highly anticipated follow-up to the hugely successful INSCAPE, will be available everywhere on March 31 via Secret City Records in Canada and XXIM Records in the rest of the world. The composer is also sharing a second single — after last November’s “The hills”— entitled “Élégie”. “Élégie is a final farewell to someone you loved,” explains Alexandra. “It’s a sad song filled with pure love. An ode to facing your vulnerability when things are shaking in your life. An homage to the immensity of the world.”

For Néo-Romance, pianist and composer Alexandra Stréliski pondered a question. Intrigued by Romanticism, the romantics, and their “super dark” relationship to nature, she wondered what it all meant in this modern world we’ve created. “The ancient past, freedom from rules, devotion to beauty, these big romantic themes, but really expressed in a post-modern way,” she says. “How do you remain in that imaginary world in these disillusioned, scary times we’re living through? That was the premise and setting for the album.”

The subject matter of Néo-Romance was but one departure from Stréliski’s usual modus operandi. Long associated with the neo-classical movement, she wanted to distance herself from a tag that doesn’t accurately reflect her work. Inspired by the idea of encapsulating and expressing emotions through art, and the Romantics’ love of individual expression over the restraints of tradition, she set out to follow her instinct. “I’m much more of a romantic in the sense that I express my own inner world to make sense of the wider world,” she says. “So, the thread I’m pulling on here is the idea of neo-romance, in a musical way but also as a form of contemplation.”

Composing and recording in Europe for the first time, she also worked with several new musicians and collaborators and explored her family’s past — “following my roots,” is how she describes it. Néo-Romance itself was written mainly in Rotterdam, where Stréliski moved to be with her partner. And in doing so, she discovered some surprising — and prescient — facts about her own past. She visited homes in Amsterdam where her ancestors once lived; consulted a library in Paris to find compositions of her forebears, teachers and composers from the Romantic Age.

“My dad is French, my family has Polish Jewish origins, and I somehow ended up exactly where they used to live. I always felt that I was the only musician in my immediate family — that I was just this weirdo artist — but it turns out my ancestors were all directors, violinists, and theatre managers; many of the women were actresses. I didn’t know the story, so it opened these doors of reflection and identity. Of asking: ‘Where do I come from? Does music follow you through generations? What does this mean in my life?’”

Alexandra Stréliski has over 330 million streams worldwide. INSCAPE has sold 168,000 albums in Canada, where it is certified double platinum, in addition to winning five Félix and a JUNO award (Instrumental Album of the Year). INSCAPE is also one of the three best-sellers of 2019 and 2020 in Quebec, it won Album of the Year at the Independent Music Awards, and it was nominated on the 2019 Polaris Music Prize Long List. Alexandra Stréliski’s music was heard in Sharp Objects and the Big Little Lies Season 2 round-table, both on HBO, and at the Hugo Boss fashion show during the New York Fashion Week. The album climbed the classical music charts in more than 20 countries worldwide. The INSCAPEconcert received a Silver Ticket from l’ADISQ and sold more than 40,000 tickets throughout the province. Pianoscope — Stréliski’s first opus — is certified gold in Canada, and its songs have been heard in Dallas Buyers Club, Demolition, and during the Oscars ceremony in 2014.  

Billboard called Stréliski one of the foremost new stars in modern classical and Noisey stated that her music is a contrast of depth and fragility that uncannily resembles the human condition itself.