Didier Malherbe

Didier Malherbe ( born January 22, 1943 in Paris ) is a French jazz musician (saxophone, flutes, but also duduk ). Malherbe is a longstanding member of the band Gong and was involved in numerous other projects. In 1995 he founded the Trio Hadouk.

Biography

Malherbe already learned as a teenager the game on alto and tenor saxophone, came with a trip to India in the early 1960s in contact with Indian music and later studied classical flute music with René Leroy. Together with rock musicians, he stood for the first time in 1967 with the rock theater Les Idoles on the stage; but he also jammed in jazz clubs like the " chat qui pêche ". A concert of Soft Machine is said to have caused his pursuit of fusion or jazz rock.

In 1968 he stayed in Deia in Mallorca, where he the former guitarist of Soft Machine, Daevid Allen ( b. 1938 ), and his former partner Gilli Smyth ( born 1933 ) met with which he from the following year returned to France at the heart of Gong band was formed. When Gong Malherbe came partly under the pseudonym Bloomdido Bad de Grass in appearance, which was composed of the title Bloomdido of Charlie Parker and a French-sounding English translation of his surname. His saxophone is on the early albums of the band, the dominant melody instrument. Malherbe was the band that changing line already numerous until the mid- 1970s albums, including the central Radio Gnome trilogy was released, also on the departure of Allen and Smyth 1975/76 also received and worked until 1978 even on some of the albums now operating under the musical director Pierre Moerlen as Pierre Moerlen 's Gong band ( approximately downwind ).

In 1977 he founded his own band in Bloom, with whom he released a jazz-rock album and several tours undertook. With François Cahen, former pianist of the band Magma, he formed the band after Faton Bloom, who was from 1982 to 1988. Worked, except for his own bands Malherbe in numerous other projects and has performed with Didier Lockwood, Hugh Hopper, Cyrille Verdeaux, Jean -Philippe Rykiel, Pierre Bensusan, National Health and at various bands of former colleagues of Gong, including Mother Gong Gilli Smyth and Equipe Out of Pip Pyle.

In the late 1980s he joined the project Invisible Opera Company of Tibet by Daevid Allen at which changed its name soon as Gong Maison and from the 1994 Gong reunion arose, the Malherbe is connected to this day, although now the saxophonist Theo Travis there its fixed has taken place.

In the early 1990s formed Malherbe projects Zeff, Fluvius and Fétish, where musicians played as Jean- Luc Ponthieux, Pip Pyle, Jean -Philippe Rykiel, Emmanuel Binet or Michel Godard. In 1995 he founded his band still exists today Hadouk Trio, with whom he has released several albums.

Didier Malherbe can be heard on over 30 albums of the band Gong, in about a dozen albums of his own projects as well as some 50 albums with various musicians.