Macha Gharibian

“Pour son troisième album ambitieux au titre coltranien, Joy Ascension, Macha Gharibian assume sa posture de pianiste, chanteuse, auteure, compositrice, arrangeuse, réalisatrice et leader. Autour d’elle, deux coloristes qui manient les notes comme de la gouache, le batteur Dré Pallemaerts et le contrebassiste Chris Jennings, plus deux invités, Bert Joris qui dessine avec sa trompette des fulgurances cool à la Chet sur la ballade aérienne The Woman I Am Longing To Be et Artyom Minasyan qui renforce avec son doudouk l’hypnotique Sari Siroun Yar. La voix volcanique de Macha Gharibian la fait entrer dans la famille des vocalistes solaires et habitées, ce club très fermé qui va de Nina Simone à Melissa Laveaux. Album d’une femme libre et d’une artiste de son époque, Joy Ascension un disque précieux qui vient réveiller nos sens.” Pascal Bussy

The slow, rising chant of « Ritual Prayer » straightaway sets the tone of the debut album of Macha Gharibian, a music shaped by her travels, loves, desires and roots, all the influences that helped her development as an artist, strands from a tapestry woven by Armenia, the land of her ancestors, Paris, where her heart lies, and New York, her adopted city. Classically trained on the piano from an early age, singer, songwriter, performer, and a bold composer for the theater and cinema, Macha Gharibian added jazz to her repertoire after a lengthy stay in New York and has achieved a natural blend of all these influences mixing jazz, Armenian folk songs and other non-Western traditions in which she has forged her own style that is urban, crossover and modern. A family tradition inherited from her guitarist father, founder of the famous French band Bratsch. Following on from Mars her first album which met with universal acclaim from the press who promised her “a bright future” (Libération) and rated her as “one of this new year’s best surprises” (A Nous Paris), « Trans Extended » is a light-filled journey, inspired by the traces left by exile, transmission and encounters of the kind which lead us to hitherto unknown places and reveal a new side to ourselves we have never previously explored. Macha Gharibian has performed in France and international venues such as the Ottawa International Jazz Festival (Canada), New York Rockwood Music Hall (US), and in Russia, China, Taïwan, Hong Kong, Colombia, Afghanistan, Armenia, Algeria, Belgium. She also played at the Paris Jazz Festival, Fête de l’Humanité, Marciac l’Astrada, Tourcoing Jazz Festival, Rocher de Palmer, Nantes Pannonica, Paris Duc des Lombards, New Morning, Café de la Danse…