Michel Sanchez

Michel Sanchez is a French musician born on July 1st 1957 with Somain (Northern). He passes part of his youth to Aniche, a small town of north. To trust of its roots it remains still today in this area. It begins the music at the age from 4ans by the training of the accordion, with an excellent professor, Mr. D' Alberto who teaches the jazz to him, music for which it will always nourish a great passion. At the 15 years age, in 1972, it enters to the academy of Douai, or it studies the organ lithurgic, the piano and the percussion. 5 years later it enters to the higher academy of Paris in class of organ, and studies with Rolande Falcinelli. Impassioned by the composition as much as by the instrument, he studies Messiaen, Marcel Dupre, Jean Guilloux, H Enri Dutilleux, Ravel, and generally in parallel impassions for all the music of the XXe century, and practical the Classical music and the Jazz. Although plunged in a traditional universe, he discovers that of the traditional musics; Africa first of all with its extreme diversity of styles and instruments, but also India, Eastern European countries, South America, etc… A constant curiosity pushes it to listen to musics of kinds and colors very varied, waking up in him the taste of the interbreeding of the cultures.

Influences

IT spends three years to the higher academy of Paris, then, in north in 1980 returns, or it will start to work in the studios of recordings, in the capacity as type-setter-arranger, with the service of very varied musical mediums. From this moment it will be invested much in electronics, having found in the synthetizers the extraordinary sound richness which it already sought in the traditional organ. This passion for the sounds will not leave it any more; in the Eighties, only one thing counts for him, to develop its own musical language, inspired by its intellectual guides: The large musicians of jazz such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Jan Hammer, which at that time (70/80) do not hesitate has to employ electronics to hustle the practices, and to create formidable compositions or the new sounds mix with the new languages. Type-setters such as Ravel, Debussy, Darius Milhaud, Andre Jolivet, Stravinski, Bartok, constantly live it by the open-minded of which they were the example. Indeed, their genius did not encourage them to scorn any foreign musical form in their medium, but on the contrary to be inspired some. Let us quote the influences of the jazz and traditional musics in some their works. It is in this spirit of fusion that Michel Sanchez seeks has to develop his work. That it composes of the musics very sophisticated, or very accessible, it always seeks the unexpected one, the originality, and the co-education of the cultures is an essential ingredient to reach that point. With beginning of the year 90, when Michel Sanchez makes listen to with Eric Mouquet a brought back melody of the Solomon Islands - today " Sweet Lullaby ", the largest tube of Deep Forest -, mixed with modern sounds on synthetizer, it is a revelation.

Michel and Deep Forest

Their first album in 1992, Deep Forest, is with the colors of Africa which Michel fascine by the vocal techniques that one finds there: astonishing, perpetuated and renewed by the children who play their vocal cords like instrument. This album is from the start an international success. Eric and Michel are not long in leaving in 1995 Bohème, their second album, inspired this time by Eastern Europe. Success is the same one, installing from now on the Deep Forest in the musical landscape as well French as international. A universality which gives rise to a new kind: the World Music, initiated in the Eighties by large inventors such as Peter Gabriel, Weather Carryforward or David Byrne. For their third album, Comparsa left in 1998, Eric and Michel chose Cuba, the Mexico and Madagascar. More cordial, more festive compared to Bohème which inspired the melancholy, this album prolongs the success of Deep Forest and reaffirms their step of researchers of traditional musics. On scene, the Deep Forest are new: three singers and six musicians, including three with the keyboards. For Michel, the scene is a permanent combat between its desire for improvising, for trying the most difficult things, and at the same time the trac, the fear not of not arriving there. " But finally, I always release myself at the price of a terrible headache after each concert! " , acknowledges-T-til.

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