Cyrille Aimée
Saturday, February 11, 2023 at 8pm
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Tom Rogers and Sally Anderson
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This performance is presented without an intermission.
Cyrille Aimée: Vocals
Sam Hirsh: Piano
Max Gerl: Bass
Pedro Segundo: Drums
Improvisation is not just a technique for vocalist Cyrille Aimée. It’s a way of life, one that has not only allowed her to share her engaging voice and sparkling creativity with the world but has led her on an unexpected journey.
By opening herself to the whim of the moment, Aimée has ventured from singing on street corners in Europe to dazzling audiences at some of the world’s most prestigious jazz festivals. She has been hailed by The Wall Street Journal as "one of the most promising jazz singers of her generation" and called a “rising star in the galaxy of jazz singers” by The New York Times.
That adventure began in the small town of Samois-sur-Seine in France, where the young Cyrille Aimée (Sur-real M-A) was introduced to a wealth of diverse music by her French father and Dominican mother: everything from Michael Jackson to French chanson, Flamenco to country-western.
Aimée’s passion for music and inherent curiosity led her to a discovery that would change her life. As the site of the annual Django Reinhardt Festival, Samois played host to an annual gathering of gypsies, and their fireside sing-alongs would lure the precocious Cyrille out of her bedroom window after her parents had gone to sleep. Those experiences exposed Aimée not just to the joys of gypsy jazz, which would go on to be an important color in her rich palette of influences, but more importantly to the gypsies’ spontaneous, nomadic and music-filled way of life.
It was the idea and unlimited potential of improvisation that set Aimée on her course, and the desire to pursue that in-the-moment creation inevitably led her to jazz. She attended the American School of Modern Music in Paris and garnered her first taste of fame – or, perhaps more accurately, notoriety – when she was selected as one of 16 semi-finalists for Star Academy, the French equivalent of American Idol. When she realized how restrictive the show’s contract would be, however, she opted to walk away, igniting a scandal in the French media.
Aimée escaped the spotlight but was soon drawn to the U.S., where she attended SUNY Purchase on scholarship – in large part due to its proximity to the jazz hub of Manhattan. She honed her skills through weekly gigs at at Birdland Jazz Club; during that time she also became a regular at Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, where pianist/co-owner Spike Wilner and saxophonist Joel Frahm took her under their wings.
At the famed Montreux Jazz Festival in 2007, Aimée won the vocal competition, recording her debut album with the prize money. It was the first of many such accolades to come, including winning the Sarah Vaughn International Jazz Vocal Competition and becoming a finalist in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Vocal Competition.
Released in 2008, Cyrille Aimée and the Surreal Band immediately spotlighted the singer’s winsome charm, supple voice and stylistic diversity, incorporating buoyant swing, French and Latin tinges, and graceful touches of folk and pop. In the ensuing years she would continue to hone and expand those influences, integrating elements of Brazilian music, gypsy jazz, and singer-songwriter traditions. A pair of duo albums with Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo followed, along with live dates captured at Birdland and Smalls, the latter featuring trumpet great Roy Hargrove, and an ebullient date with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra.
In 2014 Aimée made her major label debut with the release of It’s A Good Day on Mack Avenue Records. Her quintet featured two remarkable guitarists: the contemporary jazz sound of French-Italian Michael Valeanu and the gypsy-flavored steel strings of Adrien Moignard. The same band returned for Aimée’s follow-up, 2016’s highly acclaimed Let’s Get Lost, providing a fruitful outlet for her wide-ranging talents as they toured the world over the last several years.
In 2018, Aimée ended a chapter in her remarkable journey with the release of Cyrille Aimée Live (Mack Avenue Records). Receiving widespread critical acclaim from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, this release served as the finale of her longstanding band while bidding a fond adieu to the material recorded and presented in the previous 5 years in a live setting. Always looking for the next adventure, Aimée quickly shifted to her 2019 release, Move On: A Sondheim Adventure (Mack Avenue Records), celebrating the legendary Broadway songwriter Stephen Sondheim.
In 2020, she recorded Just You, Just Me, a Patreon exclusive self-release, co-led with pianist Ryan Hanseler. In 2021, she was invited to participate as featured artist on Adonis Rose and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra’s release Petite Fleur. She also reunited with guitarist Michael Valeanu for a vocal and guitar only recording, I’ll Be Seeing You.
She has taken to telling her own story to audiences and students alike, from TEDx talks to speaking at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder. She teaches master classes for aspiring musicians, emphasizing an aware and spontaneous life over technique and rote repetition.
She currently divides her time between New Orleans and Costa Rica, focusing more intently than ever before on her own songwriting, taking her music in fresh new directions. As always for Cyrille Aimée, the only thing that’s certain is that she’ll find a creative spark and a new pathway from whatever happens next....
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