Gérard Marais

Gérard Marais (* 19th September 1945 in Enghien-les-Bains ) is a French jazz - guitarist , composer , arranger and bandleader.

Live and act

After studying literature, Marais played a. a. in the Dharma group (1971). He performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival and worked with Michel Portal ( Splendid Yzlment ), Burton Greene , Bernard Vitet , Jouk Minor , Colette Magny , Raymond Boni , Stu Martin , Claude Barthélemy and François Méchali .

In the 1980s he shifted his activities to music for films ( Le Grand Jour by Robert Kramer ) and ballet and also plays in a trio with Didier Levallet and Dominique Pifarély . He founded the Big Band de Guitares , u. a. with Raymond Boni, Claude Barthélemy, Philippe Deschepper , Colin Swinburne and Jacques Mahieux , with whom he recorded the album of the same name on the Thelonious label in 1984 . Marais became known to a wider audience in 1985 through his jazz opera "La Baraque Rouge", a. a. with Annick Nozati . The opera Mister Cendron followed in 1993 .

The end of the 1990s followed the album Katchinas with Yves Robert , Henri Texier and Michel Godard . He then founded “Zhivaro” with Claude Barthélemy, Didier Levallet , Henri Texier, Jacques Mahieux and Sylvain Kassap , who deal with both jazz and new music .

In 1999/2000 he played two albums with bassist Renaud Garcia-Fons , Free Songs and Acoustic Songs .

literature

• Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 .
• Philippe Carles , André Clergeat & Jean-Louis Comolli , Dictionnaire du jazz , Éd. Robert Laffont, Coll. Bouquins, Paris, 1994, ISBN 2-221-07822-5