Jean Luc Ponty
Jean-Luc Ponty, born September 29, 1942, in Avranches,
is a French jazz violinist and composer.
First prize for classical violin, in 1960, at the National Conservatory
superior of music and dance in Paris, his attraction to jazz
is due to the music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
In 1967, he won the Django-Reinhardt prize awarded by the Jazz Academy and appeared on the double CD 50 years of the Django-Reinhardt prize, released by Nocturne in 2005. He denies any influence from Stéphane Grappelli, whom he nevertheless greatly appreciated.
This French musician has obtained a real international reputation, first through his collaborations with Frank Zappa and John McLaughlin then, from 1975, by inventing a very personal career, made up of his great classical culture, his desire to popularize his fields of expression, finally his taste for experimentation and stylistic interbreeding which earned him here - in his country of origin - a number of mockers, even and especially among the ex-most fervent admirers of this "Coltrane of the violin"
that they had originally seen in him.
Purely bebop violinist in his early days, faced with the difficulty of surviving in the little space and recognition offered to him by his "first version" career,
he gives in to the American sirens who were, for him, George Duke and Frank Zappa,
then deviating towards a more popular music, rock, thus losing many
of his "purists" who took pleasure in seeing him play in Parisian clubs, such as Le Caméléon, during the 1960s.
However, his electronic experiments were crowned with success, the artist obtaining the recognition of a wider public - as evidenced by the concerts of the Mahavishnu Orchestra at the MONTREUX jazz festival - soon benefiting from enough aura to form his own groups. , conducting in turn some very talented instrumentalists, such as Patrice Rushen, Allan Zavod, Allan Holdsworth, Dan Sawyer, Leon Chancler...
In addition to breathtaking virtuosity, also endowed with a real talent as a composer and melodist, Jean-Luc Ponty was also an ambitious experimenter, among the first to combine the violin with MIDI, distortion effects and wah-wah pedals. Immediately identifiable, its sounds - in attack as in phrasing - are true signatures, also obtaining the scale of a synthesizer on the
only strings of his violins.
He modified these and thus used a five-string electric violin, fitted with a bass string tuned to C. He also sometimes used a violectra, first four-stringed and then six-stringed, with basses in C and F. The Zeta violin thus replaced the old barcus berry with which Jean-Luc Ponty had been one of the precursors of jazz-rock. However, he plays again on a barcus berry on his last album.
The Acatama Experience, released in 2007.
He worked in 2014 with the legendary singer of the group Yes, Jon Anderson, with whom he released an album in 2015 entitled Better late than never.
Angers
Culture House
December 17, 1971
Municipal Theater
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Poster signed Jean-Jack Martin
Serigraphy Gibert-Clarey - Tours
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