Nguyên Lê
Lê (actually Lê Thành Nguyên * 14. January 1959 in Paris ) is a French world music - and jazz - guitarist and composer of Vietnamese origin, countries on many important jazz since 1996 the festival plays.
Live and act
Lê, son of the Parisian professor and educational scientist Lê Thành Khôi , was an autodidact who first learned drums at the age of 15, then guitar and electric bass. He completed a degree in fine arts and philosophy in Paris. From 1983 he played with Mario Canonge, later also with Étienne M'Bappé , in the Afro-Caribbean fusion band Ultramarine . He became a member of the French " Orchester National de Jazz " in 1987, where he played with Randy Brecker and Carla Bley , among others . Three years later he released his first solo CD Miracles . In 1992 his album Zanzibar was released .
In 1993 he appeared as a soloist with the WDR Big Band at the Jazzpañna Concert and on Vince Mendoza's CD Sketches . In the same year he recorded in the Trio Init with André Ceccarelli . He then played with Andy Emler's Megaoctet , Marc Ducret (Songs from the Sixties) and Michel Portal . He became known throughout Germany in 1994 through the Berlin Jazz Festival . In 1994 he founded his own Nguyên-Lê trio, and the album Million Waves was released a year later . In June 1995 he presented parts of his concept album Tales from Vietnam for the first time at the “Halle That Jazz” festival in Paris.
Another band project Lês was founded in 1998, Maghreb & Friends , which was mainly oriented towards Algeria. The group presented their album at concerts and festivals all over Europe (Moers, Angoulême, Paris, Montreux, Rome, Cologne and others). The album Walking on the Tiger's Tail , recorded in late autumn 2004, is heavily influenced in its titles and themes by thinking along the lines of Daoism . He had previously overcome a serious illness that made him think of the "tiger death" and how he could deal with it. He has transformed his experiences into a filigree, floating soundscape. This music is reminiscent of concerts by the Oregon group and those of Renaud Garcia-Fons . In 2011 he received the Prix Django Reinhardt .
Lê is also on albums by Vince Mendoza , Pierre Louis Garcia, Thierry David, Ray Charles , Claude Nougaro , Michel Portal , Romano / Sclavis / Texier , Cæcilie Norby , Geir Lysne , Ulf Wakenius , Céline Bonacina , Kudsi Ergüner , Dhafer Youssef , Safy Boutella , Karim Ziad and Panzerballett can be heard.
Musical themes and influences
As a young man he experienced the influences of the European world music metropolis Paris, had parents who valued European classical chamber music. He made the traditional music of Vietnam independently without any academic schooling as his subject of study in order to strive for a fusion with his other cultural influences.
In a duo with the singer Huong Thanh and the multi-instrumentalist Hao Nhien or with befriended European jazz musicians, he realized an incomparable crossover of ethnic music and jazz. The traditional paths of jazz were not enough for him. In addition, he experiments with the funk trio ELB (Erskine - Lê - Benita) and his Hendrix project in rock tones.
His CD Fragile Beauty , which he recorded in 2007 as a duo with Huong Thanh, took top positions in the World Music Charts Europe in spring 2008 (April 2nd, May 4th).
Insightful quotes
- “May all colors, accents and spices come together sincerely, may they be like a middle way between the currents of cultures: West and East, Central and Pole, South and North, radiant and attractive.” - Nguyên Lê
- "No one else plays the guitar like him, with this rock-bitingness that is high in the breaks, the call motifs wafting across from Buddhist rituals and the strange transition loops," wrote Ulrich Olshausen in the FAZ about Nguyên Lê in 1993 on the jazz Festival Berlin .
- “I am a personified fusion of cultures.” - Nguyên Lê
Projects, formations (status: 2009)
- Nguyên Lê Trio
- Nguyên Lê: guitars, arrangements
- Michel Alibo : electric bass
- Karim Ziad : drums, percussion
- Nguyên Lê "Jimi Hendrix Project"
- Nguyên Lê: guitars, arrangements
- Cathy Renoir: vocals
- Michel Alibo or Linley Marthe : electric bass
- Karim Ziad or Francis Lassus : drums, percussion
- Nguyên Lê "Purple"
- Nguyên Lê: guitars
- Huong Thanh and Nguyên Lê - "Dragonfly"
- Huong Thanh: Singing
- Nguyên Lê: guitar, arrangement
- Hao Nhien: vaulting board zither ( đàn tranh ), box zither ( đàn bầu ), flute ( sáo ), percussion
- Dominique Borker or François Verly: percussion, synthesizer
- Michel Alibo or Étienne M'Bappé : Bass
- Joël Allouche: drums, percussion
- Nguyên Lê Quartet:
- Nguyên Lê: guitars
- Rita Marcotulli : Piano
- Chris Jennings : Bass
- Danny Gottlieb or Roberto Gatto : Drums
- ELB (Erskine - Lê - Benita)
- Peter Erskine : drums
- Nguyên Lê: electric guitars and guitar synthesizers
- Michel Benita : double bass
Discography (selection)
- 2019 Overseas (ACT, with mostly Vietnamese musicians)
- 2018 Nguyên Lê Quartet: Streams (ACT, with Illya Amar, Chris Jennings and John Hadfield)
- 2017 Nguyên Lê & Ngô Hồng Quang : Há Nôi Duo (ACT)
- 2014 Celebrating the Dark Side of the Moon (ACT, with Michael Gibbs and the NDR Bigband )
- 2014 Erkki-Sven Tüür : Symphony No. 5 for Big Band, Electric Guitar and Symphony Orchestra
- 2012 Jazz Bigband Graz : Urban Folktales (ACT)
- 2011 Songs of Freedom (ACT)
- 2009 Saiyuki (with Mieko Miyazaki , Prabhu Edouard and Hariprasad Chaurasia )
- 2008 Erskine - Lê - Benita: Dream Flight featuring Stéphane Guillaume (tenor and soprano saxophone)
- 2007 Huong Thanh and Nguyên Le: Fragile Beauty
- 2006 Homescape Duos with Paolo Fresu and Dhafer Youssef
- 2005 Walking on the Tiger's Tail with Paul McCandless , Art Lande , Jamey Haddad
- 2002 Purple - Celebrating Jimi Hendrix (with Aïda Khann , Corin Curschellas , Bojan Zulfikarpašić , Me'shell Ndegeocello , Michel Alibo, Terri Lyne Carrington , Karim Ziad)
- 2001 Erskine - Lê - Benita: E_L_B
- 2000 Bakida (with bass player Renaud Garcia-Fons and drummer Tino di Geraldo and others)
- 1999 Huong Thanh: Moon and Wind
- 1998 Maghreb and Friends (with Karim Ziad, Michel Alibo, Bojan Zulfikarpasic, B'net Houariyat and Wolfgang Puschnig, Paolo Fresu, Alain Debiossat , Stefano Di Battista , Mokhtar Samba , Cheb Mami )
- 1997 3 trios
- 1996 Tales from Vietnam (with Huong Thanh, Hao Nhien, Paolo Fresu, Trilok Gurtu , Simon Spang-Hanssen , Michel Benita etc.)
- 1995 Nguyên Lê Trio: Million Waves (with Dieter Ilg and Danny Gottlieb )
- 1992 Zanzibar (Musidisc, with Paul McCandless, Joël Allouche and others).
- 1990 Miracles (Musidisc, with Marc Johnson , Peter Erskine )
Web links
- Official website
- ACT via Nguyên Lê (with Lê photo, German / English)
- Nguyên Lê at Discogs (English)
Remarks
- ↑ Vietnamese Embassy Berlin: Two Vietnamese musicians nominated for German awards , April 20, 2018
- ↑ Brief portrait with discography
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Lê, Nguyên |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Le, Nguyen |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French jazz guitarist and composer |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 14, 1959 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris , France |