Biography

Since moving to NYC in 1995, she has been involved simultaneously in the world music and free improvisation scenes. She has appeared at the Symphony Space and in many downtown NYC venues: Downtown Music Gallery, CBGB’s Downstairs, and the Knitting Factory, among others.

Her debut recording, A Tribute To Japanese Music, was released in 1996. Since then, she has pursue her creative work as a composer and improviser.

Performed and/or recorded with: Ricardo Arias, Richard Bona, Thomas Bramerie, Bruce Gremo, Ari Hoenig, Elisabeth Kontomanou, Oscar Noriega, Jean-Michel Pilc, Tony Moreno, François Moutin, Jérôme Sabbagh, Assif Tsahar’s Orchestra, among others.

Discography as a leader includes: A Tribute to Japanese Music (Solo Flute, 1996), Works One (featuring Thomas Bramerie, bass, and Jean-Michel Pilc, piano, 2002), Works Two (in progress).

Discography as a sideperson includes: The Niger Project (produced by Harry Belafonte, 1999), The Other Flute Trio (2000).

The artistic process

There is a process of work I always return to: composing, improvising and recording. These are three very different ways to make music and be. By constantly rotating from one to another, I keep being surprised, startled and refreshed. Recording, like composing, allows me to structure the global space, alternate silences and interventions, and create harmonies, counterpoints and sound effects. In contrast, improvisation triggers spontaneous creativity, allows me to develop melodies and use characteristic techniques of the flute. Live playing and composed parts interact together in either contrast or resonance mode.

I visualize each composition as a Tableau, a life picture of my inner and outer worlds. By blowing the forms, shapes and lines which I hear and feel, I am the artist who is going to cut, chisel, model, scrape and trace. Music itself makes me draw, paint and sculpt.

Here is a process in which I am constantly experimenting and creating. There is an ongoing exchange between what has already been shaped and what will come next. I never know when and how a Tableau will start, even less how, where and when it will end. Only music knows.

Interview with the flutist

What is music for you?

Music is about living and feeling the whole spectrum of emotions from joy to sadness.

What do you call a “Tableau?”

A Tableau is a changing picture, a metaphor of my inner and outer worlds.

Life, changing picture? Could you explain?

I don't fossilize a picture when creating a Tableau. My major goal is to keep triggering the unpredictability of improvised expression, and to liberate all kinds of emotions coming from the inner world. Rather than fixing the execution, I let myself follow the life process of change, mutation and evolving form.

Nature is a constant background to your music and is reflected in many of your titles: Moon... Birds in Hudson... Woman enlacing a tree...

Nature has always been a main source of inspiration for me, but since I have been living in the country around nature, it has become part of my entire daily life. I spend hours walking around and taking photographs. Naturally, my environment influences me: I play what I see, hear and smell.

How do you compose, regularly or only when inspired?

When inspired for sure. There are cycles. There is a life process, a daily need to go down deep into my imagination in general. Some days, it brings me to my songs for children, some others to the flute.

What is your source of inspiration?

There are many sources and they never turn out to be the same: music itself, dance, painting, sculpture... Greatness in art, nature and life: anything until it brings me exaltation and sublimation. Pain also, deep feelings in general, magic...

When did you start playing music?

The day I stopped trying to play the flute; the day I started to improvise and compose in accord with my own voice.

Why the flute?

In my case, it is been more a “that's it” than a why: I had a real revelation in ballet class. I was around six years old, dancing along with music, when suddenly everything just stopped except music itself, its beauty and power with a voice telling me: “I want to play music.” I definitely had the organic need to blow and I found myself by playing the flute. It’s a love story.

Any names of influences?

Music itself and my records have been and still are my influences. I mostly listen to classical and jazz music. A list of names would be too long and exhausting, but off the top of my head come Maria Callas, Schubert, Chopin, Miles Davis, Edith Piaf, Jascha Heifeitz, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould...

What influences me the most is the essence of the artist. There are a few musicians I had the chance to hear live, such as Jean-Michel Pilc, Elisabeth Kontomanou, Sam Newsome, Ari Hoenig, Thomas Bramerie, François Moutin and Yoshikazu Iwamoto whose music made a lasting impression on me.

Art in general is my influence. Not a week passes without plunging myself into the work of Rodin, Cézanne, Picasso, Giacometti, Modigliani, Pollock, Noguchi or Brancusi...

You have been collaborating with different kinds of artists in the past: dancers, actors, poets and photographers...

I did, and I hope to keep doing it. Working with different kinds of arts allows me to experiment new environments and performing-spaces. I deeply believe that working with other artists completes and expands my music.

Any wish, any musical directions you'd like to go in?

Keep playing and exploring my own voice. Be at one with my work as I do what music is all about: sharing and communicating with people.