David Herzhaft

One of today's most original harmonica player, David Herzhaft was born in 1974 and raised between blues and country-music. His father Gerard Herzhaft is a highly regarded specialist on these music (a dozen of books published and translated around the world). As a kid David’s “heroes” were Fenton Robinson, Joe Maphis, and Byther Smith. As a teenager David met Johnny Shines, Eddie Campbell, and Charlie Musselwhite.

Very early though he was attracted by jazz and due to his work on the overblow technique he developed his own style with time, bands, encounterings (Howard Levy, Joe Porcaro).

One of today's most original harmonica player, David Herzhaft was born in 1974 and raised between blues and country-music. His father Gerard Herzhaft is a highly regarded specialist on these music (a dozen of books published and translated around the world). As a kid David’s “heroes” were Fenton Robinson, Joe Maphis, and Byther Smith. As a teenager David met Johnny Shines, Eddie Campbell, and Charlie Musselwhite.

Very early though he was attracted by jazz and due to his work on the overblow technique he developed his own style with time, bands, encounterings (Howard Levy, Joe Porcaro).

Since 1991 he performed in many blues, bluegrass, country and jazz bands in most festivals of the same kinds in France, Europe and Canada. With those bands (bluegrass burger, country postal, freeandise) he recorded about a dozen cds. In 2001 he made his first solo record on Fremeaux and Associés label “Des Mots d'Harmo”. Then he recorded, directed and composed the music of Catfish Blues a cartoon broadcasted on National TV in France that went out on DVD (Warner) and was awarded 1st prize in 2006 at the Animation Festival of Chicago.

Still performing in various blues and country bands, David now aims at developping and playing more his own music. He has also written five methods, four of which were published by the French publisher HL Music.

David second CD has just been released on Hland records in a limited double Digipack edition:

World Jazz music from Coltrane to Paganini played by one of the most original harmonica virtuoso. A classy double CD set featuring Howard Levy, Frank Gambale, Brian Fullen, Samuel Garcia, Thierry Lecoq and many more

Jazzin’ Around is a musical journey travelling into the jazz idiom. The first cd has tracks rolling like a live set of modern jazz with funk and fusion accents melting nice and original re-arranged standards with strong compositions. Summertime is bouncing and ultra hip, A Night in Tunisia begins with a very heavy binary groove and features Howard Levy playing better than ever. Jazzin’ Around features Frank Gambale and David Herzhaft sweeps his harmonica licks accordingly.

The second CD is the Around part joyfully taking the listener from middle-east (The Happy Shiek) to French jazz waltz (Rue de Tribourg) which both features accordion wizard Samuel Garcia, to Louisiana and a very sensitive interpretation of “How Insensitive” where the harmonica brings a warmth and emotion close to the Blues.