Zoot Octet & Natalie Dessay
Biography Zoot Octet & Natalie Dessay
Natalie Dessay
After an extraordinary career that took Natalie Dessay to all the major international stages (including the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera - where she was the first French opera singer to be appointed Kammersängerin - the Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera House and the Opéra national de Paris), the soprano now concentrates on recitals, the theatre and chanson singing. She performed under Michel Legrand in a production of "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" at the Théâtre du Châtelet, toured Europe and America and released two albums with him, "Entre Elle et Lui" and "Between Yesterday and Tomorow". She performed again at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Sondheim's musical "Passion" directed by Fanny Ardant. At the same time she gave numerous concerts in Europe and the United States as a duo with the pianist Philippe Cassard and recorded three albums ("Debussy - Clair de Lune", "Fiançailles pour rire" and "Schubert").
Dessay made her spoken theatre debut in "And", a monologue by Howard Barker, at the Grand Théâtre de Tours. In the summer of 2018, she hosted the Festival d'Avignon for "Certaines n'avaient jamais vu la Mer" in a production by Richard Brunel and performed in Stefan Zweig's "Legend of a Life" at the Théâtre Montparnasse. She is currently returning to singing, performing the repertoire of Claude Nougaro in a programme conceived by Yvan Cassar ("Sur l'Ecran noir de mes Nuits Blanches").
The Zoot Collective
was created in September 2016, on the initiative of several young jazz musicians who wanted to promote a common vision of their practice and propose original creations.
Since its creation, the collective has carried out various projects, including Zoot Suite Vol.1 and Vol.2, which brought together the Zoot Octet and a string quartet, as well as the show "Pannonica" created at La Seine Musicale in 2019, based on the story of the jazz baroness "Pannonica de Koenigswarter", embodied on stage by the great Natalie Dessay, surrounded by the musicians of the Zoot Collective.
In recent years, the Zoot Collectif has also initiated numerous concerts and jam sessions that have contributed to the buzz of the Paris jazz scene. In November 2021, it organised the first edition of its festival, the "ZootFest", which brought together hundreds of people for 9 concerts in 7 different venues.
