MEDERIC COLLIGNON’s career so far is just like his
talent –huge and dense. A real bulimic, he has taken part in
numerous bands, experiences, projects, compositions… Brimming
with imagination, the trumpeter has had a go playing almost all
possible musical genres:
Salsa, Be-Bop, 60s/70s Jazz, Funk, Trash, New Orleans, R’n’B,
contemporary Jazz, modern Jazz, Ethno-Funk, Electro…....How could this
« extra »-ordinary musician be introduced?
Well, what immediately strikes is his energy… The same inexhaustible
energy, on stage, and on his albums.
On stage, it seems he is everywhere: successively drawing his
pocket
cornet and blowing a high-pitched bebop phrasing, singing, or
playing
a Korg keyboard as the beat goes up…
A master puppeteer, he handles
instruments and sounds, always pushing them further. And with a
look,
with an unnnoticeable gesture, « Médo » conducts his musicians a
la
Miles Davis, as a discreet conductor, attentive to his accomplices.
Before such rhythmic and harmonic mastery, Médéric’s skills as a
brilliant composer become obvious. He adapted and rewrote with
great
talent « Porgy and Bess » for « Jus de Bocse », his pumped-up
quartet. The result is breathtaking, some sort of artificial and
colourful opera, powerful, fresh and free. With this project,
Médéric
got awarded with the Frank Ténot prize for French revelation of
the
year at the 2007 Victoires du Jazz.
With the same quartet, he now releases his new album « Shangri-
tunkashi-la », a tribute to Miles’ 1968-75 period.
« Miles’s first "electric" period, a crossroads of so much
energy,
audacity, determination, grace and pure beauty, instinctively gives
me
the desire to understand it and play it. » (Médéric Collignon)
