- country:France
- region:Mediterranean
- style(s):Jazz, Jazz Manouche
- label:KaRu Prod
- type:Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet
- gender:male
- instrumentation:instrumental, jazz combo, guitar
- artist posted by:KaRu Prod
Line up
- Antoine Tato Garcia (feat.) (guitar)
- Costel Nitescu (violin)
- Dominique Di Piazza (bass)
- Rudy Rabuffetti (guitar)
- Steeve Laffont (lead guitar)
Links
Steeve started playing the guitar at a very young age; essentially learning by avidly watching and listening to his uncles and cousins play, during every family celebration.
Attentive observer of his elder’s musical jousting, he endlessly strived to imitate each and every guitar players’ particular expression.
Django’s recordings have allowed Steeve to perfect his intuitive and self-taught understanding of rhythm, harmony and improvisation. He has since rapidly come to be recognized as one of the very best guitarists of his generation.
Moreover, Steeve has been permeated with flamenco, which is of course omnipresent for the Catalan gypsies, the friends and neighbours with whom he grew up.
His close proximity to Barcelona encouraged him to immerse himself in the Latin music scene that was introduced to him by the south-American musicians he met there.
Thanks to these mentioned artists (all open to the world and its different musical movements), Steeve quickly learnt to navigate with ease, passing from classical music and American jazz to Brazilian bossa nova.
He established his own musical identity through these diverse sources of inspiration.
His guitar playing is resolutely « manouche » in style but has a very particular accent, much enriched by his openness to the surrounding world and its music, be it Latin, Mediterranean or even jazz, in all its forms.
The new recording project « Alba Gitana » by Steeve, articulates around his own compositions.
The way Steeve plays his guitar is very harmonically open and his cadences come, one after the other, without repeating themselves, and seem to tell a story…a story best told by moonlight or, better still, by the light of an open fire.
The rhythmic either plays the counterpoints or underlines the melody, thus allowing the soloist a very large span of freedom of expression.
The cords seem to take turns in friendly banter… they converse, tease or even argue and in doing so, underline the precise atmosphere which the compositor hopes to suggest to the listener.
If we listen to the track Alba Gitana for example, we pass consecutively, from the distinctive glow of central European gypsy, to the more Latin colours of the Iberian peninsular, only to move on to flirt with a more Indian interpretation. The film flickering before our eyes is a tale of voyage and roaming and all the sentiments associated with this choice of lifestyle.
Via lamentations and expressions of joy, the listener will be guided to find his or her own interpretation of the unveiled Gypsy world.
A resolutely modern and evocative world indeed and a very far cry from the usual portrayal Gypsies tend to be afflicted by.