Marie-Annick Lepine

Marie-Annick Lépine was born in Repentigny on November 5, 1978, and is a multi-instrumentalist member of the Quebec group Les Cowboys Fringants. A classically trained violinist, she also learned viola, cello, piano, flute, accordion and guitar, and later played ukulele and mandolin. She wrote her first compositions as a teenager when, in 1996, she met Jean-François Pauzé and Karl Tremblay at a songwriters' competition, taking part, on violin, in their duet in the final. In search of accompanists, the trio recruited their great-cousin Jérôme Dupras on bass and drummer Dominique Lebeau, giving birth to the group Les Cowboys Fringants. The group's success with the 1998 album Sur Mon Canapé only increased with the following albums Motel Capri (2000) and Break Syndical (2002), attracting an ever-widening audience as witnessed by the live recording Attache Ta Tuque! (2003) and the Centre Bell DVD in 2004. Marie-Annick Lépine also collaborates with Dumas, composing the music for Frank Wimart's documentary L'Horloge interne. Married to Cowboys Fringants singer Karl Tremblay, the violinist signed her first solo album Au Bout du Rang in 2007, in between tours and albums with the group, for which she produced the arrangements. Re-launched with the album J'ai Brodé Mon Cœur (2016), her career continued with the creation of the children's show La Petite sorcière gentille with Catherine Durand and a third album, Entre Beaurivage et l'Ange-Gardien, released in 2021. Karl Tremblay's death from prostate cancer on November 15, 2023, at the age of 47, occurred shortly before the release of the unreleased single "Noël Noël", which reached #8 on Billboard's Top 30 Adult Contemporary Songs Canada.