Fidel Fourneyron, trombone

Geoffroy Gesser, saxophone, clarinet

Sébastien Béliah, double bass

 

Fidel Fourneyron, trombone

Born in southwestern France, Fidel Fourneyron moved to Paris in 2006 to complete his training in the class of jazz and improvised music at the Conservatoire. There, he met people and collectives that proved decisive for his aesthetic choices and future collaborations — including the COAX and UMLAUT collectives, les Vibrants Défricheurs and le Tricollectif, all of whom he still works with regularly. Drawn to improvisation (as part of the National Orchestra for Creation, Experimentation and Musical Improvisation) as much as to contemporary music (he worked with the Ensemble Hodos), Fidel is also fond of great swing orchestras and is a soloist in the Umlaut Big Band, which specializes in 1920-30s dance music. Spotted by the biggest names in contemporary jazz — one of them being Marc Ducret, who asked him to be part of his Real Thing #3 sextet — Fidel joined Olivier Benoit’s Orchestre National de Jazz in 2014. Together with Roy Nathanson (Lounge Lizards), he was a guest musician for French quintet Papanosh’s thunderous tribute to Charles Mingus, called “Oh Yeah Ho!”His recognizable touch can also be found in Radiation 10, Jukebox, Eve Risser’s White Desert Orchestra, Marc Ducret’s Tower Bridge and Tricollectif’s Tribute to Lucienne Boyer. Fidel is often invited to perform as a soloist (European Youth Jazz Orchestra, MGH

Orkestar) and asked for masterclasses (Conservatories of Poitiers, Tarbes, Blois, Angoulême, or for Dijon’s Tribu Festival, etc.). Since September 2014, he has been conducting the Fanfare du Carreau du Temple — an amateur orchestra comprising some 40 musicians and for which he wrote an original repertoire.

“Un Poco Loco,” the trio he is part of, revisits 1950s standards with both elegance and humor. The band released their eponymous debut album in November 2014, on the Umlaut Records label; it was included in the program for Jazz Migration’s 2015- 2016 tour. Fidel also performs as a solo musician. His work is recorded on High Fidelity, a record which came out in the fall of 2015.

 

Sébastien Beliah, bassist, composer 

Based in Paris and Warsaw, Sébastien Beliah's work is mainly focused on

improvisation and on his connection with various traditions or writing forms. He embraces as much a historical practice of jazz with the Umlaut Big Bang as the intentional deviation of this practice with Un Poco Loco.  He has co-directed the Ensemble Hodos with Pierre-Antoine Badaroux for the past 8 years, in which he boldly blends contemporary compositions with his practice as an improviser. In 2018 he released his first record for double bass solo entitled “Nocturnes”, a manifesto of a refined mode of playing the double bass and research of an ascetic form. He is also fascinated by traditional music - in particular from Poland and nearby countries. Out of this fascination the band  Lumpeks was born, - a quartet exploring traditional melodies from central Poland (Radom region) in a contemporary way. Sébastien has performed at the major jazz platforms of Europe - such as Sacrum

Profanum (Cracow), Venice Biennale, Acht Brücken (Cologne), Le théâtre des quatre saisons (Gradignan), Jazz d’Or (Berlin), La Dynamo de Banlieues Bleues (Pantin), Angelica Festival (Bologna), Guess Who? (Utrecht), and D’Jazz Nevers. With Un Poco Loco they were honored by the Jazz Migration program of AJC, “Record of the month” Jazz Magazine and were twice “selected record” by Citizen Jazz. They were twice awarded the “Record prize” by the Charles Cros Academy with the Umlaut Big Band, and they also won Polish Radio's  Grand Prix “Nowa Tradycja” with Lumpeks band.

Sébastien has a CA of jazz and has taught the double bass, improvisation and jazz at the CRR of Reims from 2006 to 2016.