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Listening to him talk, one already hears him play. Claude Barthélemy is quick, very quick. At once proclaimed the quickest guitarist of the planet, when entering the avant-garde jazz world, he can also show an amazing subtlety on slow rhythms. It is difficult to relate a portrait of this chameleon, quoting Django as well as Steely Dan, Keith Richards, John Coltrane, Cesaria Evora, Pierre Boulez, Couperin, Anton Webern...
Photograph : Mephisto © Mephisto.
Claude Barthélemy took a guitar in June 1970. Eight years later, with a master degree, he hesitates between mathematics and music. Michel Portal solves the question by hiring him immediately (October’78). Since then, he takes the chorus all over the world.
His route took him from the Oedipe band, a rock-jazz’70’s group (eggs boxes on the walls of the family home garage) up to the homes of the highest level scholarly music (creations with the Ensemble Moderne in Francfort, the Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, Ars Nova, and soon the Orchestre de Lille). Moreover, he joined up to 1987 Portal’s Unit, that is to say the " cream " of European jazz, the Orchestre National de Jazz he directed from ’89 to ’91 (two records : Claire and Jack-Line at Label Bleu), a wonderful experience with the divine Mali diva Nahawa Dumbia, creations for and with dramatic works (Shakespeare with Gilles Bouillon, cooperation with Yann Colette...), plastic arts (Peter Sinclair, Kiki Picasso), and not enough for ballet (Carlson, Josette Baïz).
At each stage, records and quality labels (Cobalt, OWL, Deux Z, Evidence, Zéro de Conduite) which tell fragments of him, a constitutive puzzle of a picaresque shifted life :
Jaune & Encore (79) with, among so many others, Henri Texier and Didier Malherbe, Forest One (81) with a cover by Kiki Picasso, a modern recording with multiplied guitars thanks to the studio magic, Real Politik, self-production on vinyl long-playing record released as the CD was imposing itself, thus a financial abyss but a boarding card for joining the ONJ cockpit.
Then Rock Airs de La Lune for all children, that is to say also the child still remaining inside ourselves, “Solide” with his 20 years trio: Jean-Luc Ponthieux (bass) and Manuel Denizet (drums), Monsieur Claude, musical bullfight with the immense Daunik Lazro (sax), Claude Tchamitchian (bass), Christophe Marguet (drums). “,I don’t know if I like music, but I am sure that I have something to do in it. One says music lover in the same way as drug addict,one does not say “melophile” like… Francophile”. Self-taught, Claude Barthélemy says that he has ears, a memory and especially a wish: 31 years of guitar playing and 31 years minus one week with a band. “I have always played for and with orchestras”. A childhood in a suburb and the 70’s spent going too far, in all senses and styles, jazz-rock trend, folk punk technique, highly premeditated atonal funk, and particularly an energy for avant-garde style. “No, suicide-commandos this is a military term, not for me. I am just a musician from today. I am doing my synthesis keeping in mind that it is immoral to get bored.”
His new album Sereine (Label bleu), he has wished it cheerful, bright, a comedy accessible to anyone who is ready to listen, Italy seen from Paris.
With Jacques and Nicolas Mahieux (drums, contrabass, father and son), Didier Ithursarry at the accordion and Frank Tortiller at the vibraphone as well as himself with all kinds of string beauties and a rhythm box. As guests, Elise Caron (voice), Médéric Collignon (cornet and voice), Philippe Lemoine (sax), Jean-Louis Pommier (trombone) and Bojan Z (keyboard). On the program, 11 tunes and just 50 minutes, the precise time to set up a Chinese portrait of this musician at the start of the year 2001. In order, Munir for the oudist Munir Bachir, he had the luck to meet in ’86, but also for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s incantatory song, Viera da Silva, a tribute to the great Portuguese painter, but also to BB King!, Sereine, a meditation on energy, Barthématiques, a speech on method discourse as a tribute to Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk, a classical piece of his repertoire, René Thom/René Thomas, chaotic bebop dedicated to the Belgian guitarist and inventor of the catastrophe theory, Cançao para Ti, text by Pierre Leglise Costa, music by Claude Barthélemy, sung by Elise Caron, Le Travail des Eléphants, dodecaphonic big band standard written in Thailand after having seen these big animals doing a headstand, Bornéo, a musette-waltz, a proposal of marriage, then a retake of Syracuse by Henri Salvador and Bernard Dimey, a French song archetype (voice: Elise Caron), Elles font les ils, a reverent technical madness for Django and, finally, Oud-Bar, because “ in twenty years time, I shall be a bar oudist, since I cannot be a bar pianist…”.
A final humoristic touch, even if this virtuoso guitarist has been feeling for a long time a real attraction for the Arab lute, “ a virile and soothing instrument”, on which he improvises everyday, for his wife, for his friends, for himself. A magical instrument which brings peace and silence. “A note and everybody becomes silent”. Even him, Claude Barthélemy.
Contacts
Agent
Country: France
Name: CC PRODUCTION / TIMELESS MUSIC EDITIONS
Tel: 01 48 72 32 97
Fax: 01 48 72 38 91
E-mail: info@ccprod.org
Website: www.ccprod.org
Adress: 27 bis rue Charles VII
94130 Nogent Sur Marne
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