Louis Sclavis & Benjamin Moussay
Biography Louis Sclavis & Benjamin Moussay
Louis Sclavis
was born in 1953 in Lyon, where he studied clarinet at the music conservatory and performed in local bands on the side. During this time, Sclavis not only played in ensembles such as the Marvelous Band, Marmite Infernale and the Workshop of Lyon. He also made contact with colleagues such as Michel Portal, Bernard Lubat and Henri Texier, all of whom he was able to inspire for his musicians' initiative ARFI (Association pour la recherche d’un folklore imaginaire). It was the legendary birth of an attempt to combine traditional music with jazz. 1982 particularly showed Sclavis's unbridled imagination. On the one hand, he founded his own combo, Le Tour de France, with six musicians from various regions of France: Gerard Siracusa, Benat Achiary, Philippe Deschepper, Yves Robert, Michel Doneda and Alain Gibert. This was followed by recordings and performances with free music celebrities from Evan Parker to Tony Oxley and Peter Brötzmann. After numerous concerts at European festivals, he founded his quartet feat. Bruno Chevillon in 1984, with whom he recorded the ECM album “Rouge” (1991), among others; in 1987 the Sclavis Septet was formed exclusively for the Banlieues Blues Festival. With the clarinet trio feat. Jacques di Donato and Armand Angster, founded in 1988, Sclavis concentrated on improvisation and contemporary classical music, with compositions by Pierre Boulez and Brian Ferneyhough, and began to work with the choreographer Mathilde Monnier. And with whom he continued his love of theater, which was already evident in 1980 in his collaboration with the theater company Image Aigue. Since then, Sclavis has also become a sought-after film composer (including for Jean-Louis Comolli), and since 1982 he has put together numerous multi-media spectacles such as “Jazz comme une image” with the world-famous photographer Guy Le Querrec. Le Querrec is also the one who documents the musical journeys to Africa that Sclavis has been making with Aldo Romano and Henri Texier for several years. The decisive milestones in Sclavis' multilingual career are documented by the changing chamber music formations over the years, with the Acoustic Quartet of 1994 (Dominique Pifarely, Bruno Chevillon, Marc Ducret) building on previous successes and all of them being represented on ECM. The same applies to the trio founded in 1994 with B. Chevillon and Francois Merville. Sclavis has received numerous awards during his career: the Prix Django Reinhardt (1988), 1st Prize at the Barcelona Biennale (1989), British Jazz Award (1990).
Benjamin Moussay
first graduated in classical piano at the Strasbourg Conservatory, before devoting his keyboard exploration to jazz and other improvised contexts. A frequent collaborator on ECM recordings of Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois (Sources, Silk and Salt Melodies, West, Characters On A Wall), Benjamin has developed into an indispensable pianistic voice in Europe. His piano solo debut for ECM Promontoire (2020) was awarded the “Coup de Coeur” by Académie Charles Cros and praised by the critics: “an exceptional album” – Le Monde; “a series of free improvisations that often sound like perfectly plotted miniatures” – The Guardian; an indispensable composer whose reputation will one day rival that of his illustrious predecessors – Télérama.
