Joëlle Léandre (born September 12, 1951 in Aix-en-Provence, France) is a double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation. In the field of contemporary music, she has performed with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain, and worked with Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Both Cage and Giacinto Scelsi have composed works specifically for her. Gave an historic solo concert in "Jazz em Agosto" in 2007 (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisboa, Portugal).
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Joëlle Léandre (born September 12, 1951 in Aix-en-Provence, France) is a double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation. In the field of contemporary music, she has performed with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain, and worked with Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Both Cage and Giacinto Scelsi have composed works specifically for her. Gave an historic solo concert in "Jazz em Agosto" in 2007 (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisboa, Portugal). In this same top jazz festival, Joëlle performed also in the "Quartet Noir", a superior quartet with quite rare live performances, with Marilyn Crispell, Urs Leimgruber and Fritz Hauser. She has also collaborated with some of the preeminent musicians in the fields of jazz and improvised music, including Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Evan Parker, Irène Schweizer, Steve Lacy, Maggie Nicols, Fred Frith, Carlos Zingaro, John Zorn, Susie Ibarra, J. D. Parran, Eric Watson, Ernst Reijseger, and Sylvie Courvoisier. In 1983 she became member of the European Women Improvising Group (EWIG), which resulted from former Feminist Improvising Group and in later 1980s she co-founded the feminist improvising Trio Les Diaboliques, with Schweizer and Nicols. After listening to jazz (Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Monk, Dolphy), "I quickly got into the free, improvised realm where, for me, Derek Bailey is extremely important, also George Lewis and Irène Schweizer, and for sure, Anthony Braxton. Meeting Derek in New York several years ago had nearly the same impact on me as meeting Cage" (Kanach, 1991). Léandre recorded with Bailey on Les douze sons and on the Company disc Trios, and has worked with a wide range of improvisors, for example: Maggie Nicols, Lindsay Cooper, Irène Schweizer, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Eric Watson, Lol Coxhill, Peter Kowald, William Parker (described by Morris (1991)), and Barre Philips. She is a member of the European Women's Improvising Group (recorded on Intakt 002). She has recorded one of the weirdest records (even by free improvising standards) in Les domestiques with Jon Rose - a collection of domestic noises set to musical effect - and more recently has formed The Canvas Trio with long-term associates Rüdiger Carl and Carlos Zingaro.
