Martin Guerpin

Martin Guerpin is Assistant Professor in Musicology at Paris-Saclay University, pedagogical coordinator of the Medinea On Air programme, and a musician specializing in jazz and Algerian chaâbi. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure de la rue d’Ulm and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, at Columbia University in New York City, and at the Université de Montréal.

His research focuses on European jazz, the relationships between art and popular music, and between music and identities, in the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. His PhD thesis, entitled Aesthetic and Cultural Meanings of Appropriations of Jazz in the French Art Music World (1900–1939), is currently in preparation for publication (Vrin publishing house). He is also preparing a critical edition of French-language texts about jazz written during the 1920S (Vrin). His publications, which also include a volume on Music and Postwar Transitions (Berghahn Books, 2023) and on Björk (special issue of the Canadian journal Circuit — Musiques contemporaines, 2021), have been awarded the SOCAN–Proctor Prize (Canada) and a Marie Curie Fellowship (European Union). Martin Guerpin has also published more than 50 articles in scientific journals, including the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, the Revue de musicologie, the Revue musicale OICRM, the Cahiers de la SQRM, Les Cahiers du jazz, and L’Histoire, as well as in numerous collective volumes. Since 2015, he co-leads the “Music and Nation” international research network (Paris-Saclay University, the University of Leeds, the University of Vienna, and Princeton University), which investigates questions such as the role of music in post-war periods and the role of the arts in the Americanisation of Europe before 1945.

Martin is also a music critic for Jazz Magazine, and a saxophonist. As a member of the Gil Evans Paris Workshop, he was awarded the Jazz Magazine prize for Best Concert (2014) and a “Choc” from Jazz Magazine/Jazzman for the album Spoonful (2017). Along with Algerian mandolist Didine Kati, he co-founded Azawan, a quintet that brings together European jazz musicians and Kabyle musicians specialising in Algerian Chaabi. The ensemble have released their first album (Azawan, 2022), and he also appears in the Laurent Cugny Tentet album (2023). He is currently artist in residence at the MAC Theatre in Saint-Omer, France, with a grant from the Centre National de la Musique.