Régine Alexandra Chassagne (; born 19 August 1976) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, and multi-instrumentalist, and is a member of the band

Arcade Fire Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band from Montreal, Quebec, consisting of husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and Jeremy Gara. The band's touring line-up includes former core ...

. She is married to co-founder

Win Butler Edwin Farnham Butler III (born April 14, 1980) is an American-Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, and multi-instrumentalist. He co-founded the Montreal-based indie rock band Arcade Fire with Josh Deu and his wife Régine Chassagne. Early l ...

Early life and career

Régine Alexandra Chassagne was born in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, Canada, and grew up in St-Lambert, a suburb south of Montreal.Carpenter, Lorraine. (16 September 2004).
Hot property
." ''

Montreal Mirror ''Montreal Mirror'' or just ''Mirror'' was a free English language alternative newsweekly based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada which was distributed every Thursday. It had a circulation of 70,000 and reached a quarter of a million readers per week. ...

.'' Retrieved 19 October 2007.Arcade Fire talk about their music
" (6 March 2007). '' Raidió Teilifís Éireann''. Retrieved 16 March 2007. Her parents, who were Haitians of mixed French and African descent, moved from Haiti during the dictatorship of

François Duvalier François Duvalier (; 14 April 190721 April 1971), also known as Papa Doc, was a Haiti, Haitian politician and Haitian Vodou, Vodouisant who served as the president of Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. He was elected president in the 195 ...

, which is alluded to in the Arcade Fire song "Haïti", in which she sings, ' ("My unborn cousins haunt Duvalier's nights"). The line is in reference to the relatives who were killed during the Jérémie Vespers massacre. Chassagne attended before earning a B.A. in communication studies at

Concordia University Concordia University () is a Public university, public English-language research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College (Montreal), Loyola College and Sir George Williams Universit ...

in 1998, and went on to study jazz voice briefly at

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

. She was singing jazz at an art opening at Concordia in 2000, when Win Butler met her and persuaded her to join his band. They married in 2003. Ten years later, their son was born on 21 April 2013. Chassagne has also been involved with a medieval-themed band called and with Jimmy Rouleau in the jazz duo Azúcar. She also wrote the music for the two-minute David Uloth short film "The Shine", and she contributed to the UNICEF benefit project as part of the North American Hallowe'en Prevention Initiative, performing the song " Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?" along with Win Butler. She plays many instruments on stage, including

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

hurdy-gurdy The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-turned crank, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin (or nyckelharpa) bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar ...

, keyboards,

organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...

and

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

. In

, Chassagne performs lead vocals on some songs, including "Haiti", "In the Backseat", "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations", "Empty Room", "Abraham's Daughter", "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", "Creature Comfort", "Electric Blue", and "Unconditional II (Race and Religion)". In March 2015, Chassagne, along with Win Butler, attended the launch of

music streaming A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...

service Tidal, and revealed themselves, along with other notable artists, as

shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...

s in the company.

Personal life

Chassagne has been married to fellow Arcade Fire member Win Butler since 2003. They had a son in April 2013.

References

External links