*NEW: All Jean-Michel's albums & songs now available on iTunes Store: search for "Jean-Michel Pilc", listen & download
*NEW: Success in MN & ID for Hoenig Pilc Project
Read road report
Check articles & blogs
(scroll down to "Other Articles - 2008")
More about Hoenig Pilc Project
(scroll down to bottom of page)
* Check Jean-Michel's 2008 itinerary including:
-April / June 08: European Tours
Trio, NYU Summer Jazz Intensive etc.
-July 08: Hoenig Pilc Project Tour
-Oct / Nov 08: Korea & European Tours - Trio, Solo
In progress - Please contact us for bookings
SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH 3 NEW VIDEOS
Widmung clip + 2 excerpts of a new film about Jean-Michel.
Born in Paris in 1960, self-taught, Pilc was a jazz devotee by age 8 which is when he first heard Bix Beiderbecke.
After building a respectable musical career in Europe, Pilc arrived in the U. S. in 1995 and soon signed on as musical director for Harry Belafonte (who wrote the liner notes for Pilc's 2002 Dreyfus debut, Welcome Home). To date, Pilc has played with such greats as Roy Haynes, Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, Jean Toussaint, Martial Solal, Michel Portal, Marcus Miller and Lenny White and made recent sideman appearances with his esteemed peers Ari Hoenig, Sam Newsome, Rosario Giuliani, Elisabeth Kontomanou, Richard Bona and more.
But Pilc's accomplishments as a leader have garnered the widest praise. The legendary critic Dan Morgenstern chose Pilc's masterful Cardinal Points as a top-ten album of 2003. JazzTimes enthused that it 'should be studied in every music school in the galaxy...' Pilc's follow-up, the solo piano Follow Me, was one of Howard Reich's top 2004 picks in the Chicago Tribune. Andrew Durkin of All About Jazz wrote: 'Pilc leans toward a comprehensive pianism, ably expressing-on a single instrument, no less-so much of what has made jazz fascinating, problematic, or inspiring over the last hundred years.'
'No jazz pianist today offers anything like his melange of monster chops, wildly impulsive imagination..."
-Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes
'Mr. Pilc seems to have dropped from the sky fully formed with technique and his ideas in place. He is a physical and densely harmonic player, a splashy stunner...'
-Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
'...visual art references come to mind: Cubist renderings of melody in which the original is reshaped into a completely different visual perspective... Pilc is a player with a future, one whose impressive work deserves far wider exposure.'
-Don Heckman, The Los Angeles Times
'The right hand runs of jazz pianist Jean-Michel Pilc are
enough to send shivers up your spine, but he is about more than
chops. His densely harmonic reinventions of standards you thought you
knew clearly shows a musical genius at work.'
-Eric Brace, Washington Post
'Beyond all that can be said about his masterful technique and his beauty of touch, it is the unpredictability that is central to his remarkable talent. As one listens to each selection, be they vintage or newborn, one is taken into his world of improvisation where the unexpected is constant.'
-Harry Belafonte
VIDEOS
Widmung
Jean-Michel, Thomas Bramerie (b) and Mark Mondesir (d) play "Widmung", a Schumann melody arranged by Jean-Michel, from his upcoming CD "New Dreams" (Dreyfus, release 2007). A clip by Gildas Boclé.
Jean-Michel Pilc: A Portrait (2 excerpts)
An upcoming film about Jean-Michel by John McCormick (release 2008 - DVD & iTunes).
Featuring Ari Hoenig, François Moutin, etc.
