French composer, trumpeter & ethnomusicologist Yohan Giaume is building an oeuvre that combines his passion for world music traditions, large-scale collaborative efforts, and love for the trumpet, his first instrument. His musicological research focuses on the origins and intersections of musics between the Americas, Europe and Africa, but his motivation is less academic and more about creating contemporary settings for vital traditions so they continue to inform and inspire. After studying trumpet, composition, orchestration, and jazz studies in the French Conservatories of Lyon and Chambéry as well as Musicology at the University of Sorbonne, Giaume sought firsthand experience with musics of the world. He studied, lived and worked for various periods in Cuba, Argentina, Peru, Morocco and Louisiana.
Collaborative efforts have included work with artists including the Banda de Santiago de Cuba, Benito Suarez (Buena Vista Social Club), Kocani Orkestar, Juan Carlos Caceres, Felix Casaverde (Susanna Baca), Marrakech Music Collective, New Orleans-based clarinetist Evan Christopher and the Minnesota Orchestra. Giaume’s experiences have given his composition and arranging a strong exotic flavor and attracted commissions in his native France to work with Manu Dibango, André Minvielle, Christian Vieussens to name a few. His latest interest in the indigenous traditions of New Orleans have been encouraged by a “Villa Medicis – Hors les Murs” grant 2012 from the Institut Français and a 2016 French American Jazz Exchange award which will allow him to collaborate with Evan Christopher and record his creation titled “Whisper of a Shadow, an Homage to Louis Moreau Gottschalk.”
US TOUR DATES
April 11 – 13: Residence at Bard College in New York (‘Whisper of a Shadow’) – Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
April 14, 2017: Preview concert at the Fisher Center, Performing Arts – Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
