Atypical acoustic jazz quartet. Chromatic harmonica, trombone, electric guitar, doublebass. The instrumentation and the interplay between the instruments sculpts a truly unique sound. They play an extremely progressive brand of instrumental jazz and yet t

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JAZZ: Weird Jazz, WORLD: World Fusion



Details:
Band presentation :

Four musicians with different careers and influences who share a same sound space feeling. Energy, melody, searching for rare tones combinations are the main lines of their work.

Le Monde de Kota, born in 2003 from a meeting in the Paris Conservatory jazz class directed by R. Del Fra, gathers a Tuscan double bass player, a Lebanese harmonica player of the Central African Republic, a trombonist from Orleans and a Breton by adoption guitar player.

The compositions - written and arranged for and by the band - tell a part of the musical experience of each member. A music therefore opened to the world.

In September 2002, the excellence of their musical practice gathers them in the first-rate Paris Conservatory jazz class. For one year, they learn to know each other.

November 2003, first concert at la Fontaine (Paris). It is fast followed by regular ones in this "new Mecca for jazz" (le Parisien). Then, they share the bill with Rick Margitza, Alain Jean-Marie, Laurent Dewilde, Magic Malik, Pierrick Pedron....

In September 2005, after a noteworthy concert in the Cité de la Musique Big Hall (Paris) as Mac Coy Tyner's guests, they win the 27th Jazz Hoeilaart International Contest. It is the fisrt French jazz orchestra who wins this prestigious contest.



Olivier Goulet's biography (harmonica) :

Birth by the Seine. In Paris. Self-taught. "Blues music, blues music, blues music". The gentle France, the flat country and the Parisian underground. In Lille, the brown in winter cobblestones, the red brick and the green even in summer grass: advice from Jean-Francois Canappe, Yves Torchinsky, Gérard Marais, Steve Swallow, George Coleman, Jacques Mahieux. In New York, meeting with local musicians. Jam sessions, clubs and New-York underground. The Balearics' sun in trio.
Singer and harmonica player. Harmonica player and singer. One year in Barcelona between the sea and the lemon trees. The Aula de Musica del Liceu. The blue even betwwen two summers sky.
In the meantime, theatre (he works now on a sound production of rather unorthodox texts by Jean de la Fontaine), poetry and songs. The Scheldt canal, more in the north - it still doesn't leave him.
2002 Paris. Instruction by Riccardo Del Fra, Daniel Humair et Glenn Ferris. Conservatoire jazz classe by the Ourcq canal. Arrangement and composition. Work about music gets deepened. The strips of his instrument contort themselves still curiously - it hurts for the harmonica. A strange speech gets drew up. In September, first band prize at the Jazz Hoeilaart International Contest with Le Monde de Kota. "He is the worthy heir of Toots Thielemans", people say in Belgiumâ¦
And then, singing too. Arvo Pärt, Britten, Poulenc that he works out with the band Nunc Dimittisâ¦
The place of singing in the unfinished space of notes and words with Sara Tabalu or les Patates Douces. A voice. A voice that could come from the blues, but the mother is Lebanese and the father of Central African Republic. A voice from somewhere else. Tight between virtuosity and an unknown that may be something of irreverence. Neither really from there. Nor really from here.
Sensual, it settles with simplicity as if it told us a story - priceless story-teller. Lyric and energicque, his purpose rises over the stirring song to carry us here and even a little furtherâ¦



Stephane Montigny's biography (trombone) :

A sound, a blow, a scream contained in the copper of his instrument.
At first, it is to see his father play that he goes, as a little boy, to the local dance and to the town brass and reed band parades. He wants to become a drummer, here he gets a trombone. Music school, brass and reed band, academy of music of Orleans, of Boulogne-Billancourt, symphony orchestras, his career is mapped out and he gets all his diplomas well.
But with 14, he already arranges light music hits for his trio of trombones. They will play them in the streets, bars, and other evil repute places. Then he contributes to the founding of La Belle Image, a Latino-roots brass band with which he will wander the whole world around. Quite a long way under the soles.
He works with Nassadjah (the Comoros), Gam-Gam (The Comoros), Din Rotsaka (Madagascar) - people still talk about him there, on the islands! Marcel Khalife (Lebanon), Alfredo Kutufla (Venezuela), Nancy Murillo (Colombia), Carlos de Nicaragua. Bodies and energy impulse.
Without forgetting France and its songs: Bénabar, K2R Riddim, Guy Marchand. Jazz and Paris that he furrows by bike.
Trombone slung over the shoulder between two big band rehearsals. Trombone on the shoulder with Frank Lacy, Sarah Morrow, the Belmondo Brothers, Christian Escoudé. The 19th district and its Conservatoire, where he develops improvisation under the influence of the master Glenn Ferris. His word ends up between whisper and singing. Can we talk about charm?



Julien Ome's biography (guitar) :

On the roots of a little tree, his first music notes. Between the blue of the vineyards and the blue of the popular waltzes hummed by his grand father. He is eight. Already songs under the fingertips. Then, the end of the earths or not far from it, the granite, the ocean, the sea spray. First notes shared under the Finistere stars.
The sea again, but the Tunisian shore this time, jasmine, sirocco and charming melodies of the Maghreb make stir strings and souls. And later, guitar in the hand, bag on the back, le exchange continues in the Havana and Santiago de Cuba public parks. Then in the blackened with smoke back room of the Candela, or in the Cardamomo in Madrid, for the singer Sebastian Avispa, with the double bass player Martin Gamet and gipsy musicians from Granada. Tapas, cerbesas y Flamenco. In Paris, American School of Modern Music.
Underground, job, music sheets and graduation ceremony in 2001. Then in 2003, the CNSM big stages where he works next to Dre Pallemaerts, Daniel Humair, Riccardo del Fra. The violins, the wind instruments, the brass instruments, the classical writing class or the Indian music one with Patrick Moutal⦠Some big bands to arrange, a symphonic one. 2005. The Prize. Unanimously first class honours.
Mac Coy Tyner's guest with Le Monde de Kota at the Cité de la Musique. And always songs growing under his fingers. From the funk brass bans Uranus Bruyant to the rock singer Lidsay Brockington from New-York, he composes, arranges, plays.
Improvisations and tightrope walking for "Le Bruit du [sign]", where he finds as well the singer Jeanne Added and the saxophonist Nicolas Stephan. He composes cinema soundtracks, for Laurence Cotte (Cannes Talent 2003) and Nawfel Saheb Ettaba (Tunisia). And always the same precision in his purpose, the same accuracy in the choice of his notes.



Guido Zorn's biography (doublebass) :

Between two oaks on the tortuous roads over Florence. Firenze. Cercina. 300 inhabitants. There as well, among bee over the fields and the grazings, le blue sky. The sky is blue over the church too. Le little boy plays there guitar and bass during the service on Sundays. Saturday afternoons are consecrated to rock music.
He is a bit bigger, the instrument gets even bigger and here he is in the big city - from up there you need the Vespa to get arrive - with his double bass. Not far from the Old Bridge is the L. Cherubini music school. Holding his bow, he finds himself on stage with Carlo Maria Giulini, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Uto Ughi, Giora Feidman. But double bass strings can be plucked, too: the jazz. Through the Siena little streets, he meets Furio di Castri, Franco d'Andrea, Enrico Pierannunzi, Stefano Battaglia.
He is twenty. That is how he learns his craft next to Rachel Gould, Barbara Casini, Eddie Hendrson, Damon Brown... The register is long.
Writing, it is in the Livorno music school. With Mario Grossi. Then he arranges and composes music for his bands. He will get a lot of international contests' prizes with them (Barga Jazz 2000 and 2002, Hoeilaart 2001).
2002. Paris. The sky is not blues so often in Paris. It is better to study. He goes into the CNSM. Scores on both sides of the page and recto again. Architecture and science of the sound space, of the vibration. He gets his prize with the first class honours. He works with Hervé Sellin, Riccardo Del Fra, François Théberge, Johnny Griffin.
Solo, he performs in rooms of the world's most beautiful museums: the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, the Pompidou Centre: all alone with for him four strings to weave his web and the whole body of his instrument to stir it, to burn it in places, to give it sense.




http://harmonica.typepad.com/ :

Le Monde de Kota: Murmures

If I had to choose a "pick of year 2006" record, Murmures would probably be it. I first saw Le Monde de Kota at the St Aignan harmonica festival in May and I fell in love with their music. Back then, I purchased their self-produced album which has now been released officially and is distributed in France. I went back to see them live a couple of weeks ago and purchased the alternate version of Murmures of which this is a review.
Le Monde de Kota is an atypical jazz quartet. The first thing that is unusual about them is the line-up: double-bass, trombone, chromatic harmonica and electric guitar. The other, more surprising thing about them is that they play an extremely progressive brand of instrumental jazz and yet, despite pushing the limits quite far in my opinion, they manage to keep the music accessible even to the layman's ears.
Murmures opens with Quand le Chat n'est pas Là, composed by harmonica player Olivier Goulet, which is quite typical of the approach displayed on this album. It starts with a fairly simple, catchy melody which is gradually broken down. The tune then shifts into a fairly open middle section, with double bass and trombone laying down a quiet background thread and the harmonica improvising widly over and around it. The harmonica then continues solo, with some vocalizing done by Olivier, a very weird sound all in all. Then, out of this maelstrom of odd sounds emerge first components of the harmony underlying the melody, then the foundations of the melody again, and gradually we move back into melodic territory.
The album travels through various moods, from the upbeat orientalness of Phara to the slightly mad deconstruction of L'Ascenscion d'un Nuage de Bonheur to the somber melancholy of Pourpre or the bucolic peacefulness of Verde Atteso. This variety makes its listening always pleasant and never monotonous. The album draws you in the World de Kota and then takes you by the hand to explore its depths.
There are two things that make Murmures really exceptional to me. The first is the combination of strong personalities into a coherent whole, something quite rare, especially with a quartet of instruments that are not backed into a specific role in the whole the harmonica and trombone often contribute to the harmony, the bass often takes the lead, the harmonica alone builds chord progression through arpeggios, etc. The four players have a distinct personality that is perceptible, and yet the music in the end is cohesive, a powerful blend of these personalities without any of them being crushed in the process. In fact, therein lies, perhaps, my single, slight, frustration about the album: I do wish, at times, that Julien Ormé, the guitar player, would bite a little more. As it is, he underpins the whole superbly, but his solo spots are a little too tame to really stand as tall as the other three musically.
The other thing that is quite expectional on this record (and even more perceptible live) is its soundscape. The instrumentation and the interplay between the instruments sculpts a truly unique sound. The incredible breadth of the trombone, from delicate, velvet phrases to flashes of brass, growling, screeching, and back to breathy croaks of dying sound... The double-bass often leaves the straight path of rhythmic support to fly all around the expected bass line, it clicks, it slaps, it slides, highlights with shining harmonics, hits the notes with bow, with stick; its use of sound is no less striking. And the harmonica, fluid, fast without being furious, answers both the softness and the excess of the trombone, clicks, moans, breathes, lives.
Olivier Goulet's specific path to the chromatic harmonica, to me, is its integration in the whole that constitutes Le Monde de Kota's music. He doesn't have the most stunning sound, and probably not the most inventive soloing either. But he has a capacity to interact with the rest of the band, to be not just a solo instrument, that I haven't heard in many harmonica players. He's young, and I have no doubt that his sound and harmonic inventiveness will evolve (just so I'm clear, they are already extremely impressive, it's just not what shines the most in his playing in my opinion) but already, he has found his own path.
I listen to Murmures very regularly and I can only recommend, as strongly as possible, that you get a hold of this record. If you want to form your own opinion, you can check out Le Monde de Kota's website, it features many sound samples (as well as en English version).
January 01, 2007



Jason Ricci article:

"The First band of Harmonica Sur Cher was my favorite. They were sort of a avante guarde jazz ensemble that included guitar, double bass, trombone and harmonica. All the players played percussion on there instruments. The trombone tapped its slide. The bass slapped the strings and beat on the body, the guitar stroked muted strings and the harmonica player (Chromatic) played the washboard on his super 64 chromatic using metal guitar finger picks against the raised Hohner script and bells and pearls attached to the harp. They were amazing. Technically, emotionally and spiritually moving! "