Press Reviews - English

Press reviews

Montreal Suburban

(URL no longer active)

Paris - December 2006

"Hélène Engel loves to share her passion for music with her audience. Everyone attending her concerts loves her way to communicate her 'joie de vivre'".
(Click here for full article in PDF)

Vaucluse Matin - August 4, 2005

NOTES DE VOYAGE (excerpts from the french article):
For the show “Notes de Voyage” performed on August 2nd 2005
At the Festival des Musiques Juives de Carpentras (Festival of Jewish music of Carpentras)
An enchanting duet between Hélène Engel and the violinist Philippe Briegh at the Festival of Jewish music.
She and the violinist Philippe Briegh brought us to the lands of Spain, North America and wherever Yiddish and Hebrew mixed with the languages of the world. Miss Engel speaks with a charming Canadian accent and sings with a magnificent vocal style. When the mistral wind blows from the Mediteranean, she responds playfully with a song from Provençal-Jewish tradition. Her lyrics evoke visions of olive trees fields and scents of cinnamon and cumin. To heartfelt themes such as the painful legacy of deported Jews, she expresses thoughtful simplicity and lyricism.
(full article in french available upon request)

Keith Wolzinger's Klezmer Podcast - Monday, October 22, 2007

"Voyage is the aptly titled album from Montreal-based Trio Hélène Engel. Voyage takes the listener on a journey through the Jewish musical world. The versatile Engel sings in Yiddish, Hebrew, French, Ladino, and English. With the help of Henri Oppenheim, the arrangements have an authentic sound unique to each region visited by these songs... If you like a variety of Jewish song styles, and a classically-trained voice backed by a great ensemble, then have a listen to Trio Hélène Engel. Bon Voyage!"
(Click here for full article)

La Presse - Montreal - Saturday, Decembre 16, 1995

La joie de vivre
"Ay Lu Lu, Hélène Engel's CD should touch children too (...) If language can build fences, the Joie de vivre, is universal. And this is truly what we feel strongly when listening to this album."

The Gazette - Montreal - Saturday, January 13, 1996

"Ay Lu Lu (...) is a cross-cultural delight. The classically trained singer performs in Yiddish, English and French (...) Her vocal style is warm and the recording's quality vivid (...)"

Le Journal d'Outremont - Decembre 1995

"The album Ay Lu Lu is more than a selection of children songs. It is a real musical and multicultural Odyssey throughout our memories and childhood dreams. All audiences, Jewish or other, will enjoy discovering or rediscovering these traditional Yiddish songs, among which are a few unrecorded ones (...)"
"[Hélène Engel] is an author-composer and performer gifted with a rich and expressive voice (...)."

Forward - New-York - June 26, 1996

"Montreal-based soprano Hélène Engel's latest CD is the delightful Ay Lu Lu (...). This release includes an outstanding rendition of that most famous of Yiddish lullabies, Rozhinkes mit mandlen (...) as well as a capella song Ms Engel wrote for her own newborn son Noah."

L'Arche - November-December, 1992

"Errances." (From Toledo to Brooklyn) brings in counterpoint the arrival of the immigrants to America and the Exile from Spain."

Le Nouvel Observateur - Decembre 1992

"(...) Fragrances, flavours and music intertwine in her program in Yiddish and Jewish Spanish. Alternating between happiness and melancholy, her songs are the undeniable proof of a rich and eventful past, stored in our memory for ever."

Tribune Juive - Decembre 1988

"(...) These are nearly myths, throwing the audience into the world of dreams, poetry and absurd, and for those very reasons, closer of the intimate reality of the human being (...) Hélène Engel is a voice of remarkable purity to start with (...) and of overwhelming sensitivity."

Paroles et musique - 1989

"(...) Create openings, understanding, encounters, this is Hélène Engel's goal (...). A pure and flowing voice for a universe of dreams, poetry and humor."

Télérama - November 30 to December 6, 1985

"(...) Hélène Engel's astonishingly pure voice explores with incredible grace the different aspects of Jewish heritage. Not the most well known, not the least melodious!"

Decembre 1991

"The expulsion (from Spain) of the Jews in 1492 is one of the greatest tragedies of this so extraordinary year. (...). The music of that time, as Hélène Engel delivers it, is the reflection of this civilization who sinks and knows, while sinking, that it is giving birth to a new world where the Jew, marano or not, will become the representation of the free man (...) without whom the world would only be habits, and art repeats."