Luc Plamondon, born in 1942 in Saint-Raymond, Québec, is a Canadian songwriter who studied piano and pursued classical studies at the Petit Séminaire de Québec, and who found his vocation for musical theatre after seeing Hair on Broadway. His first commercial success arrived in 1970 with the song “Les Chemins d’été”, recorded by Steve Fiset, followed by collaborations with artists such as Monique Leyrac, Renée Claude and Diane Dufresne in the early 1970s. From 1976 he co-wrote the rock opera Starmania with Michel Berger, and several of its songs have since come to be regarded as classics. The 1998 musical Notre-Dame de Paris, with music by Richard Cocciante, was a great success in France and was later staged in Québec and London, featuring the song “Belle”. Plamondon has received numerous honours, including the title of Officer of the Order of Canada in 2002, and since 2006 a career-long prize for lyricists, awarded by the Canadian society of authors, composers and music publishers, has carried his name as the Luc-Plamondon Prize.
