CYRILLE AIMÉE & MATHIS PICARD DUO

Despite her tender years, Cyrille Aimée (Samois-sur-Seine, Fontainebleau, 1984), the daughter of a French father and a Dominican mother, is an established international vocal jazz star. With a style that is based on an eclectic mix of gypsy swing, bossa nova and Latin rhythms, her unique phrasing, exuberant ideas and commanding stage presence have attracted the attention of jazz critics in Europe and America ever since she released her first recordings.

Winner of the Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition and the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, she has performed at virtually every major jazz festival in the world. After graduating from high school, Aimée went on to study at the State University of New York’s Jazz Conservatory, where she was hired to perform once a week in a SoHo club. Those gigs opened the doors to other venues until she soon found that she was a fixture on the New York jazz scene, even performing on Broadway and taking on some of the city’s toughest audiences, such as the legendary Apollo Theatre. The Wall Street Journal hailed her as “one of the most promising jazz singers of her generation”, and The New York Times said she was “a rising star in the galaxy of jazz singers”. But Aimée sees improvisation not just as a vocal technique, but as a way of life that allows her to break new ground and share her infectious voice and creative spark with the world.

In 2018, she closed a chapter of her remarkable career with her live album ‘Live’ and, a year later, she released a new album (‘Move On: a Sondheim Adventure’) as a tribute to the legendary playwright and composer Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), who saw that Aimée had a gift for storytelling through song that enriched musicals.