AOURA

This is composer/singer Aurélie Claire Prost’s first musical project, and it was born at the musical crossroads where jazz meets slam and opera. She gave it the name AOURA, and the project brings together crossbreed forms of music in a daring encounter with her own compositions, mingling song, Gothic trance and opera with memorable titles like Lucifer, Dédale and Penthésilée. She offers her texts in pulsating, committed slams, creating aerial, mysterious rhythms and wild chases between harmony and mythology. Her album also includes some highly personal (re) arrangements of jazz standards, notably Wayne Shorter’s Mahjong: a surprising, incantatory version layered with verse from Charles Baudelaire’s Vampire, from Black Nile, and even John Coltrane’s Naïma in echo of Lord Byron’s recited poem. Didier LOCKWOOD

The “Didier Lockwood Presents…” Collection:

Three reasons make Didier Lockwood an unavoidable figure in music: first, he’s an eclectic musician, an impassioned visionary recognized by all; second, he’s also a producer, stimulating and revealing new talents; and third, as a teacher he shows heart and conviction. Didier Lockwood’s triple facets have moved this virtuoso violinist to create his own School of Music, the CMDL, and now his own label: Ames. AMES not only gives Didier a home for his own productions; it allows him to produce projects for other established jazz figures, like the young prodigies graduating from CMDL. The teams at Ames and Frémeaux Associés have joined to publish the “Didier Lockwood Presents…” collection, and make available to the public the various projects to which the artist is attached, completed by his work as a producer.