Biography

A story of a revelation:
“Everything started really in Calvi ( French Corsica)”she confesses, “when three journalists could hear me, on a June 2005 night, when I was performing in a bar near the harbour. I had no clue who they were. So I went with them, all naturally, and we could play on a night free session, that happens quite often in this very warm festival. I played as usual on that night, as I use to play. Why did they have such an interest in what I did? You’ll have to ask them. “
They will reply when writing or talking facing the microphone. When he got back home, Philippe Carles, in his editorial for the French magazine: “Jazz Magazine”, wrote about the festival : “Geraldine’s alto cuts in the deep of improvisation, out of the regular ways of the bop, and gives to those nights in Calvi their reason to be: To stir up life of jazz”.
Just one month later, in the “new talents” guide, published by Jazzman, Pascal Anquetil had this warn:” Be careful! This alto is some fire! Because of her hot alto sound, between Bird and Ornette, and this great way to stack the quality of voice and rhythms. In the risk of her way to play, Geraldine Laurent knows how to reveal the incandescence of her music and her personality.” In January 2006, Claude Carrière decides to give her the honours of his “Jazz Club” on the French radio: France Musique, recorded live in a French jazz café (closed now), La Fontaine, where Geraldine makes her Parisian debuts. The shock wave is immediate. Everybody whispers about her, the « buzz » grows from day to day. Her name appears in all chats, at the speed of sound, in the most famous “jazz circle”. Jean Louis Chautemps, the saxophonist, after he could listen to her at her performance at the Jazz Club, writes a long ecstatic editorial in the magazine “Jazzman”. He ends his editorial this way: ”Thanks to Geraldine Laurent, we are now convinced : Jazz is the music for the future. I persist and sign. This genius is a poet, and Geraldine is a poet. Geraldine can do anything, even what is impossible.’’. Philippe Carles follows and makes another ecstatic editorial in “Jazz Magazine”, called: “Le sax fort”: “Her alto, with a precision such as a sorcerer’s wand, creates un-hopped geysers. Thank you so much Geraldine.”

GÉRALDINE LAURENT
« Time Out Trio »
release on september 24th, 2007
(Dreyfus Jazz / Sony)

Will this flood of eulogies and enthusiasms destabilise the alto saxophonist? Will this sudden acceleration of “her” story affect her? Will it touch her? Will it astonish her? Are the things not going too fast? She is not even 30 years old. She is shy but lucid and knows how to keep her head on her shoulders. She is aware that this is only the beginning, and that she will go on. Public performances and requests from a few famous musicians such as Patrice Caratini, Aldo Romano or Rene Urtreger, appear on a regular basis. She gets her first rewards. So she gets in 2006 the first prize in the contest “Jazz à Juan révélations” ( Juan’ s Jazz revelations), and a few weeks later, she gets the trophy for the “Django d’or” (Golden Djangos), for the category : “young talent”. In January 2007, when she performs in the United States for the IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education), she gets a very flattering editorial and has her picture in the New York Times. But how far will she go?
“I had my own life before I went to Calvi” she always says when she talks about herself. She was born in Niort in 1975, where she grew in a family of musicians. Her father, Jean Laurent, who is a specialist in musical pedagogy wrote a book called: « La tradition orale enfantine et l’éducation musicale à l’école ». (Oral tradition in the childhood and musical education at school). She started music by playing the piano, but at the age of 12 choose saxophone.
When she discovers the Big Band at her music academy, she is amazed, and this sounds to her like a « call for jazz ». After she gets courses with the Hollander-American pianist Floris Nico Bunink, who was a disciple of Bill Evans, she decides, at the age of 17, to stop the saxophone and go to the Poitiers University, to graduate in musicology. She will get back to her alto just four years later, and she won’t quit it after that. “To play this instrument since became a total pleasure ».
She performs under her name in quartet from 1999 and she tours in her neighbourhoods, especially in the city : La Rochelle. In the year 2000, she takes part in “TC Spectacle Compagnie”, where she learns how to act on stage and loose her shyness, “how to get loose of the glances and judgement of the others”. She also plays in the quartet of the French pianist Christophe Joneau, with whom she participates in his two first recordings. She decides in 2005 to come to Paris to promote both trios she works with. First one is the one with Hélène Labarrière and Eric Groleau. “With this trio, that doesn’t exist anymore, I only had original compositions”. She also cares about the second trio: ‘Time Out Trio’, with Laurent Bataille (drums) and Yoni Zelnik (double bass), A formula I love and that s fun! It’s a formula of naked trio that Aldo Romano and Francis Dreyfus really appreciate, and they decide to be the producers of her very first recording under her name for “Dreyfus Jazz”
Géraldine Laurent is not a jazzwoman such as many are, who only enjoys to cultivate her narcissistic square meadow. She is a musician of our actual days, she is a improviser of her times. A time made of past and present, but inseparably staff and collective. This first recording shows you the proof: The young alto player fascinates thanks to the never-ending game between the jazz finest memory (Rolly, Dolphy, Mingus) , and the emergency of the instant now, tradition and invention, roots and originality, rigour and ardour.
With her two tonic accessories, she is more than generous; she shows such energy, physical as well as mental. Perfect implementation, hair-raising swing, fleshy and feverish full tone, Phrasing of a naturally lyric flow, always risky,
Equal mastery of the rhythm, of the harmony, of the melody, joy of performing and singing in her alto…these are such qualities rarely found in one single person.
For her first recording adventure, she made her choice in a catalog she could play before on stage with her two friends. Except from an original theme (A Quiet), you can listen to some standards that are not that often played, and that she discovered when she was listening to different tunes or records. With boldness, she appropriates those standards to better transform them the way she feels like. To have an example, listen how she accelerates, and then reduce the speed so easily in “Lester Left Town” from Wayne Shorter. She has such a liberty and precision, when she fires with enthusiasm the tempo of “Rejoicing” from Ornette Coleman. She gives such an emotion and is so convincing when she sings a ballad like “I fall in love too easily”. With each new tune, Geraldine knows how to captivate us, by telling full of surprises stories, with ceaseless new developments. This gift is extremely uncommon, that only real improvisers can have.

In 2008, Géraldine joins Aldo Romano for his new quartet as a drummer, with Henri Texier (double bass) and Mauro Negri (clarinet). The band records the album “Just Jazz”(Dreyfus Jazz/Sony), released on May, 19th 2008.
That same year, she is nominated in two categories at the Victoires du Jazz (French Jazz Awards), and wins the trophy for “Instrumental revelation of the year”