Tuesday, September 30, 2008

David Bontemps 'The Future of Haitian Composers'



David is a fantastic pianist who started his music studies in Haiti before immigrating to Montreal where he not only continued with his studies but has also formed a Afrocentric Jazz ensemble called “Makaya Jazz”. After listening to David’s piano playing alone and with his Makaya brothers, I am even more optimistic about about the future of Haitian Music.

“Emmanuel David Bontemps was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His musical formation was done with the pianist and composer Serge Villedrouin. With him, he gave his first recital, represented with success his country in inter Caribbean piano contests, got into Haitian classical composers, and began to compose opus of his own. He arrived in Montreal in 2002, where he shares the Haitian piano repertoire in many concerts. The musicologist Claude Dauphin presented him as “the future of Haitian composers”.To this date, his most significant collaboration is with the soprano Chantal Lavigne, with whom he created and recorded the integral of the “Offrandes Vodouesques” from the Haitian composer Werner Jaegerhuber. After one of his own composition “Makaya”, which combines Caribbean traditional music, classical and jazz music, he decides to create the group Makaya Jazz to keep on sustaining and exploring this kind of musical fusion.”

OM

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