Raphaël IMBERT

Self-made musician, Raphaël Imbert takes an atypical path in the world of jazz and improvised music.
One of his favorite research domains – on which he is still working today – is spirituality in jazz music. His research led him to be Laureate of the Villa Médicis Hors Les Murs in 2003 and to publish “Jazz supreme. Initiés, mystiques & prophètes” in 2014 (Editions de l’Eclat, collection Philosophie imaginaire). The essential principle of meeting which is a decisive element of jazz music practice has brought Raphaël Imbert to work from the beginning of his career with exceptional musicians such as Archie Shepp, Yaron Herman, the Manfred Quartet, the Chemirani Trio, Arnaud Thorette and Johan Farjot’s Contrast Ensemble, Jean-Guihen and Pierre-Olivier Queyras, and very recently with the writer Sonia Chiambretto as well as the composer Karol Beffa, winner of the Victoire de la Musique Classique 2013.
Raphaël Imbert and the musicians of the Nine Spirit Company, a band he founded in 1999, offered two musical creations as part of Marseille – Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture: the first one with the French beatboxers Under Control (Babel Med Music in Marseille) and the second one with the Orchestre des Jeunes de la Méditerranée (Charlie Jazz Festival in Vitrolles). In 2010, Raphaël Imbert is commissioned by the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie de l’Histoire et de l’Institution de la Culture (LAHIC) and l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales to carry out numerous research travels in the “Deep South”. During three years, from New Orleans to Virginia, Atlanta as well as the Appalachian Mountains, he studies the fruitful relationship maintained by traditional and popular music with orality, improvisation, New Media as well as the numeric revolution. “Music is My home” is born in 2015 from this intellectual, artistic and human adventure. Bringing together different American artists, such as two veterans of the well-known Music Maker Relief Foundation, Big Ron Hunter and Alabama Slim, Leyla McCalla, Sarah Quintana, as well as the rising Star of French jazz music, the drummer Anne Paceo, this project produces an original repertoire, mixing references to American music roots and contemporary improvisation, to memory and present time. Raphaël Imbert is playing on Henri Selmer Paris’ Saxophones.

Photo credit: Molina Visuals