Alto saxophonist and singer Thomas de Pourquery received the Django-Reinhardt Prize from the Jazz Academy on Thursday, rewarding in his eyes the best French jazz musician of the past year.
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"It's a big surprise, I'm amazed, and I absolutely want to share this award with all the comrades of the Supersonic,
the group with which he released the album
Back to the Moon in the spring, without whom I will be nothing"
, declared Thomas de Pourquery at the announcement of this prize, during a ceremony at the Pan Piper, a Parisian performance hall.
“If my music speaks to people and can touch, that surprises me and that delights me”
.
Thomas de Pourquery, 44, has been on all fronts of jazz for more than twenty years.
Back to the Moon
, his latest album with his band Supersonic, is at the crossroads of free-jazz, psychedelic rock, pop and electro.
"We have rewarded a troublemaker of the jazz scene, but who knows perfectly well where he is going and what he is doing"
, declared François Lacharme, former publisher and president since 2004 of an institution created in 1954. Fifty-four members of an academy which has around sixty (journalists, writers, photographers, musicologists, programmers, animators, etc.) took part in the ballot.
2021 winners:
Prix Django-Reinhardt (best musician of the year in France): Thomas de Pourquery (alto saxophonist/vocals)
Grand Prize of the Jazz Academy (best record of the year):
Coming Yesterday: Live at Salle Gaveau 2019
by pianist Martial Solal
French Record Prize (best record recorded by a French musician):
Brotherwood
of the Belmondo Quintet
European Musician Prize (rewarded for his work or recent news): Matthieu Michel (guitarist)
Best Unreleased Prize:
In Harmony
by Roy Hargrove (trumpet) and Mulgrew Miller (piano)
Classical Jazz Prize:
Duke Ladies - Vol.1
of the Laurent Mignard Duke Orchestra
Jazz Vocal Prize: Veronica Swift for
This Bitter Earth
Soul Award: Robert Finley for
Sharecropper's Son
Blues Award: Cedric Burnside for
I Be Trying
Jazz Book Prize:
Chick Corea
by Ludovic Florin