That shift feels less surprising when you consider the scope of his career. For over three decades, Martin has worked alongside others—as a drummer, percussionist, producer, and composer—collaborating with Daniel Bélanger, Isabelle Boulay, Richard Séguin, Robert Charlebois, and Jorane, while also performing in house bands for nearly 2,000 television broadcasts. Yet behind this extensive résumé, another body of music had quietly been taking shape.
“I just started experimenting without any particular goal, without thinking, ‘I’m going to make an album.’ After five, seven, eight, ten days of tinkering, a thread began to emerge. I thought I’d like to create something that feels good, something calming,” Martin explains.
That intuitive process led to Les pôles Volume 1, the Montreal-based musician’s first instrumental album as a lead artist. Set for release on May 15, the record channels the narrative sensibility he has developed over nearly 20 years in film scoring into a more open, personal space. Moving between contemporary jazz, cinematic composition, and introspective soundscapes, the album traces emotional shifts, turning points, and gradual transformations.
For more than 35 years, Alexis Martin has supported other artists. With this album, he finally turns the focus onto himself. (Photo: Justine Latour)
“I’ve been composing non-commissioned music for a long time, but it often just sat on a hard drive,” he says. Perhaps unexpectedly, this first personal project isn’t centred on drums, his primary instrument. “I can’t really explain it,” he adds with a laugh. “I just wanted to explore different sounds. I love melodic writing; I love ambient textures.”
When colleagues pointed out the apparent paradox of an Alexis Martin album without drums, the remark became a creative challenge. He revisited the material, reshaped its rhythmic core, and brought together a group of musicians capable of inhabiting this sonic world: pianist Emie R. Roussel, bassist Mathieu Désy, saxophonists Marie-Josée Frigon and André Leroux, trumpeter Jean-François Gagnon and cellist Sheila Hannigan. More than a shift in direction, Les pôles marks a shift in perspective. After decades spent supporting others’ work, Martin allows himself to step forward.
“There’s a gap between composing something and sharing it with the world,” he says. “That step was hard. I’ve spent a long time accompanying others. I see the composers and writers I work with; I understand their relationship to their work. But putting yourself out there and standing behind your ideas is something else entirely.” That exposure led him into more intimate territory than expected. “A sense of vulnerability emerged, not so much about death, but about finiteness, about cycles ending. And also about what we actually need to feel well.”
This perspective is rooted in his long-standing work in screen composition. Martin has scored films, television, and documentaries for nearly two decades, beginning with Kino nights and a first documentary in 2006. His credits include Arsenault et fils, La petite et le vieux, Le monde de Gabrielle Roy, and more recently, Vitrerie Joyal. While this work has deeply shaped his musical instincts, Les pôles also grew out of a more reflective, academic process. Martin returned to the University of Sherbrooke to structure his thinking. “I needed to reconnect with the fundamental why,” he says. “When you do this every day, you stop asking yourself that question.”
It was in that context that he reached out to pianist Emie R. Roussel. “She brought me back to the drawing board. She guided me, and then we worked on the arrangements together,” he recalls. “Her playing brought an extraordinary colour to the music.”
A good team player
Even in a personal project, collaboration remains central—it’s part of his DNA. He continues to work closely with Viviane Audet and Robin-Joël Cool on music for visual media. “We became a three-headed dragon,” he says with a smile. Each composer works independently from the same script, yet their ideas often align in striking ways. “Sometimes, even in terms of tonalities or melodic contours, without speaking to each other, we arrive at things that genuinely connect.”
At 51, Martin doesn’t see Les pôles Volume 1 as a final statement. A second volume is already underway. This first release feels less like a destination than a permission he has finally granted himself. “I’m trying to stay in tune with whom I want to be as a person, so that the music can be as clear as possible. Not easy. Clear.
Les pôles Volume 1
Alexis Martin
Label and publisher: Les Productions ALEXIS MARTIN INC.
Click here to listen to the album on Bandcamp.