Christophe Bourdoiseau

Christophe Bourdoiseau (2008)

Christophe Bourdoiseau (born March 13, 1967 in Schiedam , the Netherlands) is a French chansonnier who lives in Berlin .

biography

Christophe Bourdoiseau spent his early childhood in Rotterdam (until 1970) and in Milan (until 1975). He later grew up in the Paris suburb of Ville-d'Avray . Today he lives in Berlin, where he writes and composes.

He started taking classical guitar lessons at the age of twelve. At the age of 15 he became enthusiastic about French chansons and played Jacques Brel , Barbara and Georges Brassens . But twenty years later searched the musical loner after after the fall of communism the countries of Romania , East Germany , Czechoslovakia , Russia and the People's Republic of China had traveled, the general public. In 1994 he settled in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg .

At first he played exclusively for friends in the back room of his local pub, but concerts soon followed on the city's stages. “This voice is addicting,” writes the Berliner Zeitung . Bourdoiseau himself said: “The people here immediately had a lot of respect for my work. This city gives me inspiration. In Paris, on the other hand, you have to be known first to get attention. ”For his texts, Christophe Bourdoiseau was inspired by past stories, fleeting love affairs, past friendships and unearthed memories of and in Berlin. He is often compared by the public and in the press with the German songwriter Reinhard Mey .

Since 2008 he has been accompanied by three Ukrainian musicians, the Trio Scho from Berlin. "The soloist and his ensemble continue such a great tradition without copying it - and one is once again surprised at the coincidence of a market in which comparable musicians are traded much higher," writes the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . “He doesn't let himself be distracted by any innovations like the Nouvelle Chanson, ” adds the daily newspaper .

Bourdoiseau is a trained journalist with a degree from the Institut pratique de journalisme (IPJ) in Paris. He was a correspondent for a number of titles in the French press in Germany and a freelancer for the French-speaking daily Journal de Genève , the Belgian Le Soir , the French daily Le Parisien , the French business newspaper Les Échos and the left-liberal French newspaper Liberation .

Albums

Christophe Bourdoiseau live, 2011

Christophe Bourdoiseau with band in the Grüner Salon, 2011

Tant de seasons perdues

His first album Tant de saisons perdues ('So many lost seasons') contains fifteen musical stories about Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “An accordion comes up playfully, the bass gives the piece pizzazz, and in no time we are on the Champs-Élysées or on Montmartre. […] “There is also Jacques Brel or Charles Aznavour in it, sometimes you can hear Mercedes Sosa , sometimes a dash of gypsy music, and then the songs are very sober chansons again. Like the piece Solitude ('loneliness'). “How well it fits in with Berlin and covers the city with a romantic sugar crust. The men also wear loose black jackets. A real existentialist combo, ”wrote the Berliner Morgenpost . "Today his new album Tant de saisons perdues is a long-running hit on Deutschlandradio Kultur ", wrote Andrea Schneider from Nordkurier . "Romantic chansons with Slavic undertones", says Susanne Papawassiliu from the program The Voice ( Kulturradio )

Constellation périphérique

In 2009 Bourdoiseau released his second album: Constellation périphérique (roughly: 'In the microcosm of the city ring'). He celebrates the banlieue of Paris (Parisian suburbs) with his own compositions as well as his own texts and those of Arthur Rimbaud . He portrayed u. a. two foreign prostitutes (Laila - and based on Zola - Nana ) from the 18th arrondissement of Paris and a farmer who has to exchange his farm for a place in a nursing home. “The album is a kind of settlement with my country, with its beautiful and its ugly sides,” says Bourdoiseau. “The subject of banlieue concerns me a lot. That is where the future of France lies and it is being ignored ”. The album was recorded and mixed in Berlin by the actor Karsten Troyke .

La mort du loup

The third album La mort du loup ("The Wolf's Death") is dedicated to traditional French chanson and provides a small anthology of French poetry. Song for song, Bourdoiseau and his band interpret poems by Louis Aragon , Charles Baudelaire , Arthur Rimbaud and other poets. The album was musically arranged by Gerald Meier , who has also worked for Udo Jürgens , Klaus Hoffmann and Barbara Schöneberger .