Benoit Delbecq
Photo by Guy Le Querrec
“Delbecq teases fascinating timbral qualities out of the keyboard, making it sound variously like a music box, a log drum, or a gamelan orchestra." Jazziz
Born in 1966 near Paris, a dreamer and adventurer, jazz and contemporary pianist, keyboardist and composer, Benoît Delbecq helped revitalize Paris' new music scene in the 1990s.
A former student of Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve Coleman, and Dave Holland at the Banff Workshop (Canada 1987 and 1990), he is a founding member of the Hask Collective (1992-2004), and of numerous international groups including his quintets Delbecq 5 and Delbecq Unit, Ambitronix, PianoBook, Kartet, the Recyclers, and les Amants de Juliette. A long-term accomplice of drummer/producer Steve Argüelles since 1990, Delbecq has collaborated and/or recorded with many other accomplished international contemporary jazz artists including Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Julian Argüelles, Michael Moore, Jean- Jacques Avenel, Marc Ducret, Noël Akchoté, Tony Coe, Gianni Gebbia, François Houle, Mark Helias, Mark Turner and the collective Los Incontrolados, where he shares pianos with Tony Hymas. He toured Central Africa in 1994 and tours international festivals in Northern and Western Europe, Canada, Japan and South America. In 2001, he was awarded a Prix Villa Medicis Hors les Murs for his first piano solo project (Nu-Turn, Songlines 2002). Delbecq also composes for film, dance, theater and radio, and has regular collaborations with French poet Olivier Cadiot, actress Irène Jacob and singer Katerine.
Benoit Delbecq is a uniquely gifted musician who has created his own music using ideas and techniques from contemporary classical (Cage, Ligeti, Nancarrow), jazz, Pygmy polyphony, European improv and other sources. He prepares the piano with various materials such as eraser bits and carved wooden twigs, and improvises on short, overlapping vamps and patterns, resulting in a complex, spacious sound that hardly seems to be emanating from a single instrument.
Benoit Delbecq solo
