SEE BRIGITTE DAJCZER perform once and her red boots will leave a permanent mark.  See her a second time and you just might fall in love. A Montreal-based, world class violinist, she often dances onstage like a child at play; yet, at the same time, she is unmistakably sensual.  A member of the Juno-nominated Les Gitans de Sarajevo, she often plays with Geoff Berner (The Whiskey Rabbi) and Michel Donato, to name a few. This Friday, she brings her newest project, Briga, to Café Sarajevo. “I call it gypsy violin in a hotbed of music,” she says. You can call it the perfect antidote to the winter blues.

Dajczer has been developing her “symbiotic relationship” with music since the tender age of four.  First came violin lessons, then original compositions by age five. By the time she was 12, she had become a multi-instrumentalist, playing violin, accordion, piano, viola, guitar, flute, and piccolo.  Classically trained at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, she learned to improvise by performing in blues bars at the age of 15.  While her incredible skill has allowed her to travel extensively as well as become a part of the world music festival circuit in Quebec, she has come to want more.

“You can function and make a living, I’ve discovered, achieve a form of star status within the island of Montreal, tour around Quebec, go to France if you feel like it, and be completely satisfied with your career … but that’s not my interest,” she says.

She has much bigger plans.  Fronting Briga, she not only plays violin, but writes original music, arrangements and lyrics, in addition to modernizing traditional Eastern European pieces.  She also takes on the relatively new role of vocalist.

“At one point, I just realized that I couldn’t do an album that was all instrumental,” she says. “I myself wouldn’t want to listen to all of it. I realized there’s this amazing power in the human voice.”
Supporting her are Richard Soly, sound designer at Place des Arts, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts, from whom she received a grant for a full length album based on Briga, to be released this fall.

“I don’t think Briga could get the support that it’s getting elsewhere,” she says. “I think that Canada has a very unique take on the musician, on the artist, on the poet … In other parts of the world you have to fight your way. We’re very lucky.”

This encouragement is understandable given the combination of high energy and unspoken intimacy of a Briga show. Audience members and fellow musicians alike have commented that Dajczer seems to transcend reality when onstage—the music seems to move through her.

“When I’m onstage, I’m just so … I’m being,” she says. “And in being, you become what you’re emitting and when you become what you emit, you become the music. For me it’s hard to separate spirituality, sensuality, the most intrinsic form of being that you can find in a higher presence.”

Much like Dajczer herself, Briga’s music moves between zones of reality, hoping to “make the hair rise on your arm,” putting the same spring in your step Dajczer has in her red boots.  Briga will warm you up, without the expense of a trip to Cuba.

Briga at Café Sarajevo
Friday, February 27, 9:30 pm
6548 St-Laurent (between St-Zotique and Beaubien)