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Emilie Lesbros

Emilie Lesbros is the kind of phenomena, composer, poet and multi instrumentalist, too curious, too energetic and too vocal-bound to restrict herself to a single language of vocal interpretation. Emilie Lesbros blurs the boundaries between different genres. She started to play on eclectic musical projects in various formations ranging from rock, punk, to electronic music. At 20 years old she decided to study classical and jazz music at the conservatory. All those experiences leads her to develop an insatiable curiosity regarding sound.

She was Rosa’s vocal lead, a very untypical rock band where Lesbros could explored a real “Unbounderies”way to sing, mixing rock, experimental and classical technics with her voice. (Rosa, The Gift, 2007)

Her encounter with the bassist Barre Phillips is crucial and results in her fully exploring the field of improvised music. Emilie Lesbros expands her vocal and corporal investigations by working with theater, contemporary dance and contemporary circus companies. These many collective experiences enabled her to refine her own choices and to explore on-stage performance, thereby allowing her to forge a singular presence before the public.

In 2005 Emilie Lesbros decided to concentrate on solo expressions, occasionally accompanying herself at the piano, the bass or the violin. These solos, which go beyond simple sound performances, blend finely melodic compositions with moments of pure improvisation. Her music exudes strong theatrical and poetic elements in unstable equilibrium between humor and seriousness. Like an intimate and zany self-portrait… Her first solo album, “Attraction terrestre” got released on 2012 (D Fragment-Full Rhizome).

She released her new EP called Miss Elie Sorbsel Sings Emilie Lesbros, between rock and groove, folk and poetry, through her singing Emilie observes and speaks about inequality throughout our society.

In 2013 the singer got invited in New York, where she lives now, to collaborate with the saxophonist Darius Jones. The recording gonna come out in 2015 (AUM Fidelity). they recorded on September 2014 in Brooklyn.

Led by an insatiable curiosity of the modalities and sounds of the voice, she knows how to convince an audience. Seeing her show is like flirting with freedom.

Collaborations: Barre Phillips, Benoit Delbecq, Xavier Charles, Bobby Previte, Chess Smith, Matt Mitchell, Pascal Niggenkemper, Sarah bernstein, Les percussions de Strasbourg, Darius Jones, Lionel Garcin….

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Emilie Lesbros Vocalist
“Emilie Lesbros appears to us on stage like Pierrot the clown, both frail and luminous, and then takes hold of us and leads us into her intimate theater. The path taken by this young singer since her encounter with some strong personalities in the world of improvisation, among whom, the bassist Barre Phillips led her over time to progress and enrich her vocal vocabulary through all these excursions in the virtually unlimited territories of vocal expression. With this solo, she gives us a solitary exploration of what might be considered her inner theater, where her voice, sometimes coupled with a piano or an acoustic bass sitting vertically on stage, blends music with words, sounds with phonemes. On tiptoe she appears; on tiptoe she exits the stage! In the meantime, she puts the audience under her spell; one could almost say that an angel had stopped by, but then again, one must believe in angels…”

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