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| Cedric Hanriot (centre) on a recent album project with Terri Lyne Carrington (left) and John Patittucci (right) Photo credit: Beth Oram |
Pianist/composer/producer Cedric Hanriot (biography) was born in the Lorraine region of France in 1976. As a musician he was a relatively late starter, having first studied electronics and audio processing at university. He entered the Conservatoire in Metz in 1998, and later had formative years at Berklee. He was called on by Herbie Hancock to work with him and Lang Lang on a major 2012 tour. Terri Lyne Carrington says of him “He is one of the most talented musicians I know.” He has also recently co-produced an album for Dianne Reeves. Michael Janisch, who will be playing in the quintet, and whose Whirlwind Recordings label will be releasing the album to emerge from the current tour says of him: “He’s one of France’s biggest exports but is not known much in the UK. He’s just one of those great guys that does so much stuff at a high level”
Cedric Hanriot has written for us about his current project, City of Poets:
City of Poets is a brand new project that Jason Palmer and I put together this year. This project features Jason on trumpet, Donny McCaslin on saxophone, Michael Janisch on bass, Clarence Penn on drums, and myself on piano and electronics.
Jason and I were fortunate enough to receive the FAJE (French-American Jazz Exchange) grant ($25,000) and this money is going to help the project to tour and to record an album. FAJE supports projects jointly conceived by French and American professional musicians with an emphasis on encouraging artistic exploration, fostering intercultural dialogue, and contributing to the dynamism of jazz. This grant is highly competitive: only five projects were selected last year.
The music that Jason and I have written is a musical homage to sciene fiction author Dan Simmons, utilizing the concepts of Olivier Messiaen’s modes.
Dan Simmon’s 1989 novel “Hyperion” tells the tale of a civilization that struggles to co-exist with the highly evolved and intelligent machines that it has created. The book detail the quest of seven pilgrims as they journey to Hyperion. Our project’s goal was to transfer our fascination with Simmon’s emotional stories into original and improvisational music based on the famed “seven modes of limited transposition”, compiled in the 1940s by French composer Olivier Messiaen, who is a monumental influence both on myself and on Jason. Everybody in the band is very excited to play, as it’s going to be a brand new repertoire, and also because we haven’t played with all of us together yet.
We are also very excited that, right in the middle of the tour, we are going to do a live recording at Pizza Express Jazz Club in London. Our goal is to deliver the energy and intensity of our music to an album. This is my second time to play in London, and I’m really excited to be back. The album will be released on Whirlwind Recordings sometime in 2015 and our booking agent in the US and my French agent will book one or a couple of tours next year around the release of the album so look out. We hope to see you at our London show.
TOUR DATES
Sept 16-20 Dates in US
Sept 22: Live recording at Pizza Express Jazz Club, London, UK
Sept 23: Dempsey’s, Cardiff, Wales
Sept 24: Trinity Laban Conservatoire, London, UK
Sept 25: Royal Academy of Music, London, UK
Sept 26: Sunside Jazz Club, Pianissimo Festival, Paris, F
Sept 27: Sunside Jazz Club, Pianissimo Festival, Paris, F
CEDRIC HANRIOT’S WEBSITE
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