Lionel Loueke

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Lionel Loueke

Lionel Loueke (born April 27, 1973 in Benin ) is a jazz guitarist and singer originally from West Africa, living in the USA , who plays fusion music with stylistic borrowings from his West African homeland.

Live and act

Loueke comes from a middle class family in Benin; his father was a mathematics professor, his mother a teacher. Loueke moved to Ivory Coast in 1990 , where he began his music studies, which he continued from 1994 to 1998 in Paris at the American School of Modern Music . At that time, he was already pursuing the goal of specializing in jazz, inspired by a George Benson album that a friend brought him from Paris. Before that he played in traditional African percussion groups and was interested in African pop music like his older brother, who is also a guitarist. In Paris he also came into contact with the music of contemporary jazz guitarists such as Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny .

From 1999 he studied jazz guitar at Berklee College of Music in Boston with a degree in 2000. In a worldwide competition he was admitted to study at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California , which he attended from 2001 to 2003. The jury included Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard , on whose Blue Note albums Bounce (2003) and Flow (2005) Loueke participated. In 2006 he played on Possibilities and in 2007 on River: The Joni Letters by Herbie Hancock.

In 2005 his first album Gilfema was released under his own name on ObliqueSound, which he recorded with two Berklee fellow students in the Gilfema trio of the same name ( Massimo Biolocati , bass, Ferenc Nemeth, drums). Another album by the trio followed in 2008 (with clarinetist Anat Cohen ) and two live albums by Loueke ( In a Trance 2005, Virgin Forest , ObliqueSound 2006).

In 2008 he recorded his first album on Blue Note , Karibu with his old trio partners and Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter as guests. In 2010 the album Mwaliko followed on Blue Note, on which Angélique Kidjo and Esperanza Spalding play. In the early 2010s, Loueke toured extensively with Herbie Hancock. His album Heritage , which Robert Glasper produced, was released on Blue Note Records in October 2012. The critic of the British jazz journal Jazzwise emphasized the power of the rhythm and the independence of the sound. On the occasion of the SWR New Jazz Meeting 2016 he played several concerts with the trio of Kyle Shepherd and Mthunzi Mvubu , which were documented on the double CD Sound Portraits from Contemporary Africa . His duo Hope with Kevin Hays was highlighted as Jazz Album of the Week by NDR .

He also recorded with jazz singer Gretchen Parlato (who had been inducted into the Thelonious Monk Institute at the same time) and performed in Land of the Sun by Charlie Haden and Distancia by Mexican jazz singer Magos Herrera . In 2018 he was a guest musician in Miho Hazama's Grammy-nominated production Dancer in Nowhere .

In 2009, he became a Fellow of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit artist development organization United States Artists . He lives privately with his wife and two children in North Bergen , New Jersey , but can be found professionally - if not on tour - in New York City .

Prizes and awards

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 he received the Rising Star Award as a guitarist in the Down Beat Critics' Poll . In 2008 his Kponnon Kpété won the Independent Music Awards as best world music song. In 2010 he and Mwaliko won the Edison Jazz Award in the world music category. In 2013 he received the ECHO Jazz in the International Guitarist category

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lionel Loueke - Heritage , Jazzwise October 25, 2012
  2. ↑ SWR New Jazz Meeting 2016 (Alte Feuerwache Mannheim)
  3. ↑ CD tip (SWR2)
  4. ↑ Jazz CD of the week (NDR)
personal data
SURNAME Loueke, Lionel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Benin-American jazz guitarist
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Benin