Wajdi Cherif

When he was five years old, Wajdi Cherif was playing on piano the Arabic melodies that he heard on the local radio by ear. As he grew up, his love for music never left him and He discovered other styles of music which made a significant impact on his personal musical tastes later.Wajdi Cherif discovered jazz by watching live videos of pianists like Chick COREA, Thelonious MONK, Bill EVANS. This influenced deeply his musical interests and he decided to study jazz extensively by himself. In 1999, Wajdi Cherif played an opening for a jazz giant, Archie SHEPP during the "Jazz in Tunis" festival.He met the same year an important figure of jazz piano in France, pianist Bernard MAURY who was to become his harmony teacher. His later meetings with great jazz pianists such as Kenny WERNER, Chick Corea and Ahmad JAMAL shaped significantly his vision of music and of playing piano in general.His music is open on the different trends of jazz, European classical music and Arabic melodies in which he was immersed since his early childhood and which influenced his compositions significantly. All this resulted in the creation of a fresh new jazz sound, a mixture of jazz and Arabic music. Wajdi Cherif distinctive performances as a leader received critical acclaim on the international stage in many renowned venues as the Tabarka Jazz Festival where he led many jazz workshops and master classes with prestigious guest artists such as Paco SERY, Al Di MEOLA, Freddy RAVEL (pianist, Al Jarreau) and others.. Other recent performances include the Institut Du Monde Arabe IMA (Paris), Tanjazz Festival (Morroco), La Villette Jazz Festival (Paris), Couleurs Jazz (Tunisia) etc.Wajdi Cherif recorded his first album "Phrygian Istikhbar" in Paris in 2003 with Diégo Imbert on acoustic bass, Jeff Boudreau on drums and Habib Samandi on Arabic percussion. "Phrygian Istkhbar" was finalist in the Indie Acoustic Awards in the USA in 2004 and got very good reviews in many publications worldwide. Three years later, Wajdi Cherif issued his second album entitled "Jasmine". This CD shows the maturity and excellent artistic standard that pianist and composer Wajdi Cherif has reached so far. "Pochade ", the first track of "Jasmine received a honorable mention in The International Songwriting Competition 2005 (USA) in the instrumental category (Judges include Sonny Rollins ,John Scofield, Steve Vai, Tom Waits...). Jasmine also received the IAP's (Inidie Acoustic Project) "Best CDs of 2005" Awards and was described as one of the best acoustic album of 2005 by the judges.
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