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Sylvain Rifflet

Saxophonist, Clarinettist and French composer, graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris, Sylvain Rifflet is the winner of the competition of La Defense and has received several awards including a "victoire du jazz" and a "Django d’or". He has performed or recorded with many musicians, including some of the "must-see" performers on the European scene (Louis Sclavis, Aldo Romano, Michel Portal, Kenny Wheeler, Riccardo Del Fra ...) but also alongside American musicians such as Joey Baron, Jon Irabagon, Jon Hollenbeck, or Michael Formaneck ... Spearheading the young generation of jazz musicians from the first decade of the 21st century, he has collaborated with those who are today on the front of the European "new scene": Verneri Pohjola, Airelle Besson, Thomas de Pourquery , Alban Darche, Pascal Schumacher, Rembrandt Freirichs, Florian Weber, Eve Risser, Sébastien Boisseau, Henning Sieverts and Fred Pallem ... Noticed as a composer in 2011 after the publication of "Alphabet" he subsequently published two albums on behalf of the Jazz Village label: "Perpetual Motion - a celebration of Moondog" in 2014 and "Mechanics" in 2015. In 2016 he releases “Refocus” his first album for the historical label Verve. He has also been a resident of the following structures Jazz au fil de l'Oise, Festival Banlieues Bleues, national scene of Alençon, Conservatoire de Besançon, Festival Like a jazz Machine, (Luxembourg.) and will be associated artist of national scene of Quimper for the next three years.

Quoting Stan Getz as his main saxophonist influence, the composer gladly draws in the field of American repetitive and minimalist music to develop a writing mixing improvisation, repetition, rupture, "bruitism" and even sometimes trance.

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2
Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet: Troubadours

Read "Troubadours" reviewed by Anthony Shaw


Sylvain Rifflet has been playing adventurous, somewhat rock-related jazz for since around 2000, and for much of the time has done so alongside a trumpeter. His emergence on the international scene in the first decade of this century was with the French quintet Rockingchair, where his co-leader was contemporary French trumpeter, Arielle Besson. They were awarded a 'Django d'Or' medal for their first album and subsequent releases have been well received. On the 2019 album Troubadour, Rifflet is ...

Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet: Troubadours

Read "Troubadours" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


In questo decennio il sassofonista Sylvain Rifflet s'è imposto tra gli emergenti più eclettici del jazz francese con dischi molto apprezzati, come l'audace Mechanics (Jazz Village 2015) e l'orchestrale Refocus (Verve 2017). In quest'ultimo ha voluto affermare la sua filiazione per Stan Getz (di cui rilegge l'album Focus) anche se la vicinanza è solo timbrica e la ricerca espressiva è ampiamente personale. In questo nuovo lavoro cambia ancora direzione e s'ispira alle musiche dei trovatori nell'Occitania del 12° ...

4
Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet & Jon Irabagon: Perpetual Motion

Read "Perpetual Motion" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


The composer, poet and instrument inventor Louis Thomas Hardin, alias Moondog remains one of the most celebrated and eccentric figures in the annals of modern music. The Kansas born Hardin, who lost his sight in a farming accident at 16, went from a unique street performer in New York to a published and recorded influential musician in Münster Germany. Who better to celebrate his singular legacy than two of today's most idiosyncratic and creative saxophonists, the Frenchman Sylvain ...

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Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet & Jon Irabagon: Perpetual Motion (A Celebration of Moondog)

Read "Perpetual Motion (A Celebration of Moondog)" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


In 1932, when he was sixteen years old, living in the heartland of depression era America, a farm accident left Louis Thomas Hardin blind. For roughly twenty-five years spanning the 1940s to the mid-1970s, he was often found on some street corner in the vicinity of 52nd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan, sometimes talking philosophically to no one in particular, often standing stock-still and silent and in full Viking regalia. At times, he slept in doorways though he had ...

3
Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet: Alphabet

Read "Alphabet" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


French composer/reed player Sylvain Rifflet is recognized not only for his work in jazz, but also in film music. With his current quartet, he has broadened his palette to include world, rock and avant-garde influences. The resulting Alphabet defies narrow classification as it straddles many styles. It certainly is a very cinematic affair, often resembling a movie soundtrack in its expansiveness. The whimsical “® and Silence" is reminiscent of a spaghetti western theme, with Philippe Gordiani's logically ...

4
Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet: Alphabet

Read "Alphabet" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


While most people think of the alphabet as a collection of letters which act as the building blocks for words, Sylvain Rifflet probably isn't one of them. The French reed multi-instrumentalist seems to subscribe to the broader definition, which states that an alphabet is really “the basic elements in a system which combine to form complex entities." His Alphabet presents an ensemble using electronics, sound manipulation, minimalism, classical ideals, film score suggestions, trance music--and, yes, jazz--as the “basic elements" that ...

100
Album Review

Sylvain Rifflet: Alphabet

Read "Alphabet" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


There is no suitable title for French composer/reed player Sylvain Rifflet's uartet other than Alphabet, a name that begins to describe the rich contemporary language of this unique quartet. Rifflet mixes influences, from Tom Waits' use of junk percussive instruments and Captain Beefheart's anarchistic sound collages to the sound designs of film composer Cliff Martinez (known for his soundtracks for the films of director Steven Soderbergh), and a shows a deep knowledge of the work of minimalist composers such as ...

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Jérôme Masco
saxophone

Photos

Concerts

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

John Hadfield's Paris...

OutNote Records
2022

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Troubadours

Self Produced
2019

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Perpetual Motion

Jazz Village
2015

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Alphabet

Self Produced
2012

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Videos

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