RAPHAËL IMBERT
Genres: Third Stream, Avant-Garde Jazz, Pop, Art Song, Folk, Jazz Related Improv, Composition, Blues, Swing, Post-Fusion Contemporary, Post Bop • France

Raphaël Imbert, saxophonist and jazz composer, was the recipient of a ‘Villa Médicis hors les murs' award for his research into sacred music and jazz. He also won the 28th national jazz competition at La Défense in 2005 with his ensemble Newtopia. One of his favorite areas in jazz and one he's still seriously investigating today - and which incidentally also earned him a Villa Medicis Off-Site Award in 2003, with a grant enabling him to spend time in New York, is the spiritual element in Jazz. This principle underlies his Nine Spirit Company, a large ensemble founded in 1999 in response to a commission to play the sacred music of Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders and Albert Ayler. The group comprised such talented soloists as pianist Carine Bonnefoy, trumpeter Chistophe LeLoil, saxophonist Thomas Savy, drummer Mourad Benhammou and multi-instrumentalist (percussion, drums, singer) Jean-Luc Di Fraya and soon became read more...