About Me
Composer:
Sebastien Gaxie was born in France in 1977. He began his musical apprenticeship by
studying the classic piano with Umberto Guzzo. He then entered a choir of
pueri cantores (Small singers of St Christophe de Javel) dedicated to sacred
and profane music. He went on by learning jazz in the Arpej school.
Afterwards, he attended style-writing courses with J-M Bardez in the Paris
Conservatoire (Academy of music), as well as composition and orchestration
with Allain Gaussin and musical analysis with B. Plantard. He has played
with key figures of the French jazz, such as H. Texier, C. Barthélemy, and
D. Levallet. He set up and ran an ensemble of 18 musicians, the Zhig Band,
for two years. This ensemble was sponsored by the studio of Islettes. They
played several pieces by Sébastien Gaxie and they were finalist of the
National Jazz competition of the Defence District in Paris, in June1999.
Sébastien Gaxie was admitted in the famous selective composition class of
the National Academy of Music in Paris in February 2000. He studied
composition with Emmanuel Nunes and Frédéric Durieux. He participated in the
well-known training session for young composers called Voix nouvelles in
Royaumont in September 2000. He had there the opportunity of working with
Brian Ferneyhough and Jean-Luc Hervé. He got a first price of musical
analysis with the highest distinction and the unanimous vote of the jury of
the French National Academy of music in June in 2001 for his dissertation on
Olivier Messiaen's Exotic Birds. At the French National Academy of Music, he
also studied orchestration with Marc-André Dalbavie, acoustic, piano,
electronic music with Luis Nahon, Laurent Cuniot, and Yann Geslin, and
ethnomusicology with Gilles Léothaud. He has obtained his degree in
composition in October 2005. He has written about twenty instrumental or
orchestral pieces until know. He has worked with various classic,
contemporary and jazz musicians and musical groups such as the NEM, Claude
Delangle, Gérard Tempia, Frédéric Deville, Frédéric Gastard, Guillaume
Bourgogne, Alain Louvier, Pascal Rophé, the quartet Onyx, the quartet Axone,
Dimitri Vassilakis, Médéric Collignon, Alban Darche, the set group, and
Sinéquanone. He has also written film music for various short, medium length
and feature films and he has thus cooperated with the London Symphony
Orchestra, Alexandre Desplat, Brigitte Fontaine, and Natacha Samuel. His
first disc Lunfardo was released by the label Chief inspector
(www.chief-inspector.com ) in March, 2005.
It was awarded by a shock of the Jazzman magazine. Sébastien Gaxie is
presently working on cycle of recordings projects dedicated to
extra-European musical cultures (Africa, Japan, Middle East). He aims at
alternating compositions in the field of contemporary music and in the realm
of jazz and improvised music.
