Michel Portal
Michel Portal ( born November 27, 1935 in Bayonne ) is a French musician, clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone and bandoneon various plays. As an " all-round musician who dances on many stylistic weddings " ( Ekkehard Jost ), he stands out both in the field of jazz as well as symphonic and with ensembles of New Music. In particular, the play on the bass clarinet owes him the distinctive stylistic and technical impulses.
Life and work
Portal, with the Basque folklore ( his grandfather led a brass band ) grew up, learned from the age of six clarinet. During the school year he was enthusiastic about jazz, but had a classical education as a clarinetist. His instrumental studies at the Paris Conservatory, he graduated with a first prize in 1958. Portal dedicated to the beginning of his musical career for the Classical and was from 1967 a member of the Ensemble Musique Vivante for contemporary European concert music (including ground-breaking interpretations of Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen).
Addition, he worked among others as a companion of Édith Piaf and popular music. Prompted by a concert by Dizzy Gillespie mid-1960s interested him increasingly jazz; he played bass clarinet and alto saxophone at, inter alia, Jef Gilson, François Tusques, Jean -Luc Ponty and André Hodeir. Later still came the bandoneon added (first heard in Mauricio Kagel's Exotica ). Since the early 1970s, he's one of the profiled representatives of French free jazz. In addition to the composer and trombonist Vinko Globokar, Jean -Pierre Drouet and Carlos Alsina Roqué he co-founded the improvisation quartet New Phonic Art
As a result, extended portal repertoire and the view of the jazz by playing with many international musicians. So he continued his begun in the 1960s cooperation with Joachim Kühn, but also played with musicians such as Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Daniel Humair, Barre Phillips, John Surman, Bernard Lubat, Dave Liebman or Lê. Portal also plays in a duo with accordion player Richard Galliano and pianist Martial Solal and since 2009 with Yaron Herman.
In addition to the musical practice, which is documented in many publications, wrote Michel Portal since 1975 numerous film scores, and is active as a performer of new music and classical clarinet concertos.
Prizes and Awards (selection)
Disco Graphical instructions ( selection)
Quotes
" ( When asked what the matter was for him the difference between jazz and new music :) " When I play new music, I live in a good hotel " "
"I want to be a Stan Getz, the three slaves takes to make them him - of course, very good - accompany. I want to make music with guys who understood the play. "
"Jazz gives me the only way to be free, to float, to dream. "
Lexigraphic entries
- Wolf Kampmann: Reclam Jazz Encyclopedia Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010528-5
- Martin Kunzler: Jazz Encyclopedia Vol 2 Reinbek 2002 ISBN 3-499-16513-9
- Ian Carr et al. (Eds.): Rough Guide to Jazz ( 2nd edition), Metzler, Stuttgart 2004, p 547