JOURNEY
Between a poet mother and a lawyer father – defender, among others, of Hara-Kiri (predecessor of Charlie Hebdo) – Caloé has something to hold on to! But this independence of spirit and this almost "congenital" taste for freedom, which finds its embodiment in her approach to music, will not constitute the only sources from which the artist will drink. Raised in a family of music lovers, rocked by classical music and French songs from her earliest childhood, she discovered herself as a musician at the age of 4, choosing the violin. Very quickly, improvisation will become part of her language. She takes the instrument out of its box whenever the opportunity arises, to accompany a text by her mother or a guitarist who passes by, before discovering jazz as a teenager. This music will never leave her.
But the singularity of this career did not immediately lead her to dream of being a jazz singer, since she first studied opera singing (at the École Normale in Paris) as well as the jazz violin, with Pierre Blanchard. Gradually, she tamed her art and forged a style over the course of experiences and encounters, such as with the musicians of the Hot Sugar Band, a swing dance group with which she traveled on the roads of France and Europe, definitively dropping the violin to devote herself fully to her new instrument: the voice.
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In order to develop her own language, Caloé wants to confront the roots. She then decides to go on a trip, on the other side of the ocean. Roots of Jazz, in New York and New Orleans, where she will meet trumpeter Ashlin Parker. Birthplace of samba and bossa nova, in Brazil, where she will stay for three months. A way also to explore the “seasons” (“so different, she says, from one end of the world to the other”), which will feed her inspiration.
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Caloé sings and composes, writing texts and music, making vocal improvisation a playground and one of her assets, whether in the interpretation of the melodies she revisits or by resorting to scat, which she worked for a long time to master in her own way. Marked with poetry, the lyrics of her songs, in French and in English, blend with an eclectic jazz, rich in its multiple influences.
In "Saisons", her first record, we find traces of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (song L'été) atmospheres, a way of revisiting the 3 beats and celebrating the waltz in the great French tradition (Les gouttes), accompanied by acquaintances with the most modern jazz (Autumn is coming, Printemps, Chiir...).
“This disc is my way of making you travel through my eyes and your ears”, declares the artist. Her rapped exchanges with L'Oiseau Fou (Hope) or her cover of one of the hits of the Brazilian composer Cartola (As rosas nao falam) show in any case that she has more than one string to her bow.
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Caloé invites us to discover this tangy and vintage universe, as Thomas Lécuyer describes it (programmer whose favourite she was), who already has a great experience to her credit, on the French and international stages (Istanbul, Stockholm, Oslo, Latvia, Montenegro...), where she had the opportunity to rub shoulders with very big names, such as drummer Dave Weckl.