--- title: Anour, the Marketing Director Who Kept Her Songs Private for Years, Releases a Debut Album With Celine Dion's Musicians description: Damascus-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter Anour kept her songs private through a marketing career, then recorded her 14-track debut with Celine Dion band members. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-09-11T19:02:06.534Z updated: 2026-09-14T09:18:14.544Z canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/anour-debut-album-celine-dion-musicians image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/anour-hero.webp categories: Music , Transformational change content_type: Spotlight region: Canada publication: Rich Woman Magazine about: - type: Person name: Anour description: "Anour is a Damascus-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter. She released her self-titled 14-track debut album in August 2026 through Fontis Entertainment, produced by Martin H. Klein and Dominique Messier and recorded with members of Celine Dion's long-time band. Her debut single \"I Am\" has passed 500,000 streams." jobTitle: Singer-songwriter --- Anour's career in marketing and communications took her to senior director at a Quebec technology company specialising in interactive audio. On 14 August she released a 14-track debut album, recorded with Dominique Messier, Celine Dion's drummer of more than three decades, and musicians from Dion's long-time team. Her self-titled debut album, "Anour", came out through Fontis Entertainment with distribution by Believe and support from SODEC, Quebec's cultural funding agency. It arrives ten months after her first single, "[I Am](https://open.spotify.com/track/0OAcJ9u2dNbAsg4tjd7sY1)", which has passed 500,000 streams and drew a run of comments from listeners asking whether the singer was AI-generated. Until the music, she had no public presence of any kind: no social accounts and no digital footprint. Anour has been writing at the piano since childhood, with no audience in mind. The album draws from that body of work, gathering early songs alongside more recent ones, or what she calls "a kaleidoscope of reflections on modern existence". ## From Damascus to Montreal Anour was born in Damascus, Syria, raised in the Middle East and educated throughout in British international schools. She was composing music and writing songs as soon as she began learning the piano. "I started writing songs as a child because some feelings were too complicated for words alone," she said in an interview with Bored City last autumn. "My mother is a classical pianist; my father, an actor and theatre director, so I grew up with music and storytelling." The influences she names run from Tori Amos, Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone to Edith Piaf, Fairouz and Serge Gainsbourg, with Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Elton John, The Beatles and Pink Floyd alongside them, and Ravel, Satie, Debussy, Chopin and Liszt on the classical side. "Born in Damascus and now a Montrealer, my exposure to music has always been eclectic, and I exist in the space where cultures collide," she says. "That in-between space is my creative home." She arrived in Montreal to study Communications at Concordia University. "I came to Montreal for university, Montreal became home, and I stayed," she told True Hollywood Talk in June. The years after graduation went into [marketing and communications](https://richwoman.co/article/tina-win-s-reinvention-from-magazine-desk-to-nyc-s-pop-stage), and eventually to the senior director role at the interactive-audio company, work that kept her within arm's reach of creativity through sound. ## A Second Career That Ran Alongside the First > "I chose security, but music never left me. It ran alongside everything as a parallel world that was entirely mine. For a long time, I tried to convince myself that this was enough, but it never was." > — Anour Her parents, both artists, "were the first ones to worry about me following in their footsteps," she says. "The stories I absorbed growing up were about the risk of pursuing the arts and by the time we moved to Canada, I felt I needed to be responsible and establish myself before I could afford to dream." So, professional life came first, and Anour kept writing in private. She wrote as a kind of journal, a way of working through whatever was happening in her life and whatever she was observing in the world around her. "My music is not an escape; it is a mirror," she says. "It often shows me the way and helps me make sense of things or at least process them." She is a private person, and before the music there were no accounts to find. "Music never let me go. Some things are in fact not choices so much as callings, and you can defer a calling for years, but you can't silence it." ## Martin H. Klein, Dominique Messier and the Sessions at Piccolo Studios Three years ago, a few of the songs found the right ears. A kindred spirit heard that Anour was regretting not pursuing music, and word got to Martin H. Klein, a music producer who had gone on to start his own technology company where Anour had been working. "It happened the way the best things tend to happen: unexpectedly and through a door I didn't know was there all along," she says. "One day, Martin asked me to join him at Piccolo Studios so we could meet with Dominique Messier who has been Céline Dion's drummer for over three decades. I played and sang some of my songs for them at the studio and we decided to work on a few." "That's when reality shifted for me," she says. "Later that week, I sent them ten songs that I recorded at home, and then another couple of songs the next weekend, and another few the weekend after that, and at one point, Martin proposed we change the plan and work on an entire album." Produced by Klein and Messier, the album was recorded at Piccolo Studios in Montreal, with members of Celine Dion's touring band: Kaven Girouard on guitar, Yves "Chill" Labonté on bass, Guillaume Marchand on keys and Mary Lou Gauthier joining Anour on backing vocals. Jean-François "Fafoui" Gagnon plays flugelhorn and trumpet, and a full orchestra, conducted by Francis Choinière and assembled by Philippe Dunnigan, who also plays violin, appears on several tracks. "These are people who have spent their lives operating at the absolute highest level of their craft," she says. "To have them bring that depth of experience and generosity to my debut has been one of the greatest gifts of my life," Anour says. "Art and music had been my sanctuary for years, and recording the album meant working with a team of professionals," she says. "I had to learn a great deal very quickly, from the practical work of making a professional album to the far harder work of sharing my songs and allowing myself to be vulnerable." Of the decision itself, she says: "One day, when this opportunity manifested, I knew it was time. Luck was on my side and with the encouragement of Martin and Dominique, I could not ignore the obvious anymore. I was glad that I had never given up on music and had never stopped composing songs. Without meaning to, I had been preparing for this opportunity my entire life." [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xejITppMls) ## The Single That Made Listeners Ask Whether She Was Real "I Am" came out on 10 October 2025. It sits between chamber pop and cinematic pop, and it reimagines Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" from the point of view of an artificial intelligence's own existential awakening. The comments began soon after release, and a good number of them asked whether the singer was an AI creation. "In the beginning I thought there was something almost poetically perfect about it, and I thought it was funny," she says. "It then quickly stopped being funny when I realized it was not just a couple of isolated comments, but we decided to let it play out." She adds: "The fact that we have arrived at a place where a human being has to defend their own existence reinforced the message behind the song." "Every element of 'I Am' is human made. Even the video was a one-take live performance. We shot it with three cameras and seven iPhones," she says. "The song is about AI, but nothing in it was created with AI," she told BuzzSlayers in December. "Everything is human-made, live, real, with actual musicians performing." "Art is a point of view. It is a word that should be reserved for the creative output of a human consciousness, shaped by everything that makes a life a life: experiences of love, loss, wonder," she says of [generative AI](https://richwoman.co/article/intelligent-diva-chincia-kenner-is-keeping-creativity-human-as-she-receives-2025-global-recog) more broadly. "Generative AI is also the result of the greatest theft in human history. Every artist, writer, musician, and creator who ever had the courage to put something of themselves into the world had their work fed into these systems without their knowledge or consent and without compensation." ## Chamber Pop Recorded With Celine Dion's Musicians The album runs to 14 tracks: For Old Souls, I Am, Love Should Feel Good, Maybe I'm Crazy, Goodbye, Sugar and Spice, Old Friend, Irony of Life, The Coast, Angel of Me, Grey, Shelley and Frankenstein, Freaks and I'll Dream About Them. "Maybe I'm Crazy" and "Love Should Feel Good" were released as singles after "I Am", and ahead of the album release. "I kept making the same mistakes in love because I had romanticized the struggle," she says of "Love Should Feel Good". "The song is about the moment you finally choose yourself, how extraordinarily alive you feel, and the simple truth that love should feel good." She writes alone, and a song can take ten minutes or several months. "I generally find myself at the piano improvising and at some point a song would write itself," she says. "The best songs I've written in my opinion, have come to me." Her current listening remains eclectic and far too wide to catalogue, but recent runs have included Kovacs, Asaf Avidan, Anohni, Michael Kiwanuka, Black Pumas, Florence + the Machine, Fiona Apple and Goldfrapp. ## Her Advice on Changing Careers Later in Life "While music has been my sanctuary for years, recording and releasing work professionally is a recent opportunity, and I feel incredibly lucky for it," the Montreal singer-songwriter says. Asked what advice she would give, she said: "music should be something you do for yourself first, and you need to be obsessed to tolerate the mountain of non-music work that comes with it if you want to pursue music professionally. Then there's luck. Luck matters more than anyone admits. I believe the universe is generous, but it works on its own schedule, not ours, so it's about not letting go of what we are passionate about and being ready for opportunities that may come our way. "So, this is me [course-correcting](https://richwoman.co/article/from-boardrooms-to-nightmares-a-spellbinding-leap-into-supernatural-fiction). And yet I also believe this journey was always meant to unfold exactly as it did," she says. "My perspectives, my lens on the world, the way I hear and feel things, all of it has been coloured and deepened by the life I lived getting here. The songs I write now could only have come from this particular point of view. And it's never too late." ## FAQ **Q: What did Anour do before music?** She studied Communications at Concordia University after arriving in Montreal at eighteen, then worked in marketing and communications, rising to senior director of marketing and communications at a Quebec technology company specialising in interactive audio. She wrote songs at the piano throughout those years without releasing any of them. **Q: Who produced Anour's debut album?** Martin H. Klein, a former music producer who went on to found an audio technology company, and Dominique Messier, Celine Dion's drummer of more than three decades. The album was recorded at Piccolo Studios in Montreal and released on 14 August 2026 through Fontis Entertainment, distributed by Believe and supported by Blü Dog Media and SODEC. **Q: Is Anour a real person or an AI-generated singer?** A real person. The question arose because her first single, "I Am", is about artificial intelligence and was written from the point of view of an AI's existential awakening. Comments asking whether she existed piled up under it. Every element of the track is human-made, and it was played live by the musicians. **Q: Is it too late to start a music career after years in another profession?** Anour's answer is no. She wrote for years alongside a senior marketing career and released her debut only after a few songs reached the right people. Because she had never stopped composing and writing, she had far more material than a debut could hold. It was difficult selecting the songs for her debut, and since she continues to write of course, she's excited to release more music in the near future. "The songs I write today could only have come from this particular point of view," she says. "It's never too late." **About Anour** Singer-songwriter Anour is a Damascus-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter. She released her self-titled 14-track debut album in August 2026 through Fontis Entertainment, produced by Martin H. Klein and Dominique Messier and recorded with members of Celine Dion's long-time band. Her debut single "I Am" has passed 500,000 streams.