Louis Sclavis (born 2 February 1953) is a French

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

musician. He performs on clarinet,

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...

, and

soprano saxophone The soprano saxophone is a small, high-pitched member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented in the 1840s by Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax. Built in B♭ an octave above the tenor saxophone (or rarely, slightly small ...

in a variety of contexts, including

avant-garde jazz Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing") is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through the late 1 ...

free jazz Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventi ...

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of ...

and contemporary classical.

Life and career

He was born in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, France. Sclavis played with the Henri Texier Quartet. He has won numerous awards, including: the PRIX DJANGO REINHARDT “best French jazz musician” (1988); First Prize in the Barcelona Biennale (1989); the British Jazz award at the Midem for “Best Foreign Artist” (1990/91); the DJANGO D’OR “Best French jazz record of the year” (1993); and the GRAND PRIX

SACEM The Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music or SACEM () is a French professional association collecting payments of artists’ rights and distributing the rights to the original songwriters, composers, and music publisher A mus ...

2009. He was one of the first to combine jazz with French

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

, working most prominently with the

hurdy-gurdy The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-turned crank, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin (or nyckelharpa) bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar ...

player Valentin Clastrier.

Discography

* ''Ad Augusta Per Argustia'' (Nato, 1981) * ''Clarinettes'' (

Label Bleu Label Bleu is a French jazz record label founded by Michel Orier. Orier established the label in the mid-1980s in Amiens and soon after took over directorship of Amiens's cultural center, where he was able to build a recording studio. Label Bleu ...

, 1985) * ''Chine'' (Ida, 1987) * ''Chamber Music'' (Ida, 1989) * ''Ellington on the Air'' (Ida, 1991) * '' Rouge'' (

ECM ECM may refer to the following: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Lenstra's Elliptic curve method for factor ...

, 1991) * ''Trio de Clarinettes: Live'' ( FMP, 1991) * '' Acoustic Quartet'' (ECM, 1994) * ''Carnet de Routes'' (Label Bleu, 1995) * ''Ceux qui veillent la nuit'' (JMS, 1996) * ''Danses et Autres Scenes'' (JMS, 1998) * '' Les Violences de Rameau'' (ECM, 1996) * ''Suite Africaine'' (Label Bleu, 1999) * '' L'Affrontement des Prétendants'' (ECM, 1999) * '' Dans la Nuit'' (ECM, 2000) * '' Napoli's Walls'' (ECM, 2002) * '' Bow River Falls'' ( Koch, 2004) * ''Roman'', (2004); * ''African Flashback'' (Label Bleu, 2005) * '' L'Imparfait des Langues'' (ECM, 2007) * '' Lost on the Way'' (ECM, 2009) * '' Eldorado Trio'' ( Clean Feed, 2010) * ''Sources'' (ECM, 2012) * ''Silk and Salt Melodies'' (ECM, 2014) * ''Characters On A Wall'' (ECM, 2019) * ''Les Cadances Du Monde'' (JMS-Cream, 2022)

Filmography

* 1999: '' It All Starts Today (Ça commence aujourd'hui)'' by

Bertrand Tavernier Bertrand Tavernier (; 25 April 1941 – 25 March 2021) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. Life and career Tavernier was born in Lyon, France, the son of Geneviève (née Dumond) and René Tavernier, a publicist and writer, ...

(

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the ...

France) * 2002: '' Un moment de bonheur'' by Antoine Santana * 2002: '' Dans la nuit'' by

Charles Vanel Charles-Marie Vanel (21 August 1892 – 15 April 1989) was a French actor and director. During his 65-year film career, which began in 1923, he appeared in more than 200 films and worked with many prominent directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, ...

(

) * 2002: '' Vivre me tue'' by Jean-Pierre Sinapi * 2007: '' After Him (Après lui)'' by

Gaël Morel Gaël Morel (born 25 September 1972) is a French film director, screenwriter and actor. Life and career Morel was born in Villefranche-sur-Saône, Rhône (department), Rhône, France, a town of 30,000 inhabitants outside Lyon. He grew up in th ...

* 2009: '' Plus tard tu comprendras'' by

Amos Gitaï Amos Gitai () is an artist and an Israeli filmmaker, born 11 October 1950 in Haifa, Israel. Gitai's work was presented in several major retrospectives in Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Lincoln Center in New York, ...

* 2009: '' Portraits-autoportraits'' by Gilles Porte * 2011: ''

Roses à crédit A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be e ...

'' by

References

External links

FMP releases
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sclavis, Louis 1953 births Living people Post-bop clarinetists Post-bop saxophonists Chamber jazz clarinetists Chamber jazz saxophonists Bass clarinetists French jazz saxophonists French male saxophonists Musicians from Lyon French jazz clarinetists French composers Avant-garde jazz clarinetists Avant-garde jazz saxophonists 21st-century French saxophonists 21st-century French clarinetists 21st-century French male musicians French male jazz musicians Brotherhood of Breath members Clean Feed Records artists Label Bleu artists ECM Records artists FMP/Free Music Production artists