Year: 2007
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:23
Size: 104,3 MB
Art: Front
(6:34) 1. Mantra
(3:34) 2. Jongo
(4:11) 3. My one and only love
(3:03) 4. Deixa
(2:01) 5. Brazaventure
(5:48) 6. Lele
(3:51) 7. Naima
(5:34) 8. Midsummer Flight
(3:51) 9. Victime de la mode
(4:08) 10. Numenam
(2:43) 11. Wenn ich ein Vogel war
The singer and globetrotter Céline Rudolph navigates the realms of experimental jazz, Brazilian music, African-influenced music, and evocative chansons, as well as urban singer-songwriter sounds, moving effortlessly between Berlin, São Paulo, Paris, and New York. She allows herself to be carried by genres, languages, and cities, always landing precisely in the realm of music.
Born in Berlin, Céline grew up immersed in her French mother’s collection of chansons and her German father’s love for jazz and Brazilian music. As a self-taught musician, she began composing on the piano and wrote her first French songs on the guitar at the age of 12. On her birthday, she received a small Fostex 4-track recorder, and it was love and obsession at first sight! For the first time, multiple melodies could be layered, fostering a sense of compositional complexity, and the joy of producing music granted her early autonomy.
“Music is like breathing, it has always been there,” she says, recalling how her father would pause while playing the guitar, allowing the children to improvise. Early on, she fell in love with the Brazilian language and began writing poetic lyrics in German or French. Initially studying philosophy, she later traded her desk for the stage and pursued studies in jazz vocals and composition.
She improvised with Bobby McFerrin, learned from Djembe master Famoudou Konaté, traveled to Brazil and West Africa, and even created her own vocal language. Praised by the press as “one of the most beautiful European jazz voices” (Stefan Franzen, Badische Zeitung), Céline is highly regarded by colleagues such as Lionel Loueke, Burniss Travis, Bobby McFerrin, Gary Peacock, Naná Vasconcelos, Lee Konitz, Wolfgang Haffner, and Till Brönner. She has shared the stage and worked in the studio with these artists.
Céline Rudolph has embarked on tours across Europe, Asia, South and North America. Three albums were created solely in Brazil: BRAZAVENTURE feat. Marcos Suzano (enja 2007), METAMORFLORES feat. Naná Vasconcelos/Till Brönner (enja 2009), which earned her the Echo Jazz award in 2010, and SALVADOR (Verve, Universal 2011), a tribute to Henri Salvador with both German and French-language versions. Since 2015, she has collaborated with guitarist Lionel Loueke, who resides in New York and has roots in Benin.
Together, they recorded the duo album OBSESSION (2017), which Ralf Dombrowski praised as a “fascinatingly personal and captivating song mixture” (Echo Jazz and nomination for the annual German Record Critics’ List in 2018). The duo toured seven West African countries, as well as Europe and South Korea. “This is a very unique project because there are no boundaries. I knew from the start that we are kind of from the same tribe,” says Lionel Loueke.
Following their duo album OBSESSION, Céline released the album PEARLS (2019), featuring not only Lionel Loueke but also Leo Genovese, Burniss Travis, and Jamire Williams, known from bands led by Glasper, Spalding, and others. “One of the jazz vocal records of the year without a shadow of a doubt, and the main reason for this beyond her fine voice is the quality of the compositional arc and great sweep of style at play throughout,” writes British critic Stephen Graham in Marlbank.
In addition to her duo with Lionel Loueke, Céline also performs solo, combining loops, effects, percussion, and guitar. She now employs this setup in her new project, SONIQS. SONIQS was founded together with multi-instrumentalist and sound experimenter Sebastian Merk, who has created a custom drum set combining keyboards, electronics, and video art, allowing him to operate freely and intuitively.
Among his tools are dissected, sampled vocal fragments from Céline’s voice, which he processes through sound filters and rhythmically reassembles, as well as entire vocal melodies forming the basis of compositions as looped “songlines.” Despite its complexity, the music maintains a sense of lightness and playful song quality. In addition to music, Céline Rudolph also writes texts independent of music, “poems,” which SONIQS spontaneously sets to music. These poems are constantly embarked upon a sonic journey during live performances, becoming new songs in the process. https://www.celinerudolph.com/about-biography-discography/
Born in Berlin, Céline grew up immersed in her French mother’s collection of chansons and her German father’s love for jazz and Brazilian music. As a self-taught musician, she began composing on the piano and wrote her first French songs on the guitar at the age of 12. On her birthday, she received a small Fostex 4-track recorder, and it was love and obsession at first sight! For the first time, multiple melodies could be layered, fostering a sense of compositional complexity, and the joy of producing music granted her early autonomy.
“Music is like breathing, it has always been there,” she says, recalling how her father would pause while playing the guitar, allowing the children to improvise. Early on, she fell in love with the Brazilian language and began writing poetic lyrics in German or French. Initially studying philosophy, she later traded her desk for the stage and pursued studies in jazz vocals and composition.
She improvised with Bobby McFerrin, learned from Djembe master Famoudou Konaté, traveled to Brazil and West Africa, and even created her own vocal language. Praised by the press as “one of the most beautiful European jazz voices” (Stefan Franzen, Badische Zeitung), Céline is highly regarded by colleagues such as Lionel Loueke, Burniss Travis, Bobby McFerrin, Gary Peacock, Naná Vasconcelos, Lee Konitz, Wolfgang Haffner, and Till Brönner. She has shared the stage and worked in the studio with these artists.
Céline Rudolph has embarked on tours across Europe, Asia, South and North America. Three albums were created solely in Brazil: BRAZAVENTURE feat. Marcos Suzano (enja 2007), METAMORFLORES feat. Naná Vasconcelos/Till Brönner (enja 2009), which earned her the Echo Jazz award in 2010, and SALVADOR (Verve, Universal 2011), a tribute to Henri Salvador with both German and French-language versions. Since 2015, she has collaborated with guitarist Lionel Loueke, who resides in New York and has roots in Benin.
Together, they recorded the duo album OBSESSION (2017), which Ralf Dombrowski praised as a “fascinatingly personal and captivating song mixture” (Echo Jazz and nomination for the annual German Record Critics’ List in 2018). The duo toured seven West African countries, as well as Europe and South Korea. “This is a very unique project because there are no boundaries. I knew from the start that we are kind of from the same tribe,” says Lionel Loueke.
Following their duo album OBSESSION, Céline released the album PEARLS (2019), featuring not only Lionel Loueke but also Leo Genovese, Burniss Travis, and Jamire Williams, known from bands led by Glasper, Spalding, and others. “One of the jazz vocal records of the year without a shadow of a doubt, and the main reason for this beyond her fine voice is the quality of the compositional arc and great sweep of style at play throughout,” writes British critic Stephen Graham in Marlbank.
In addition to her duo with Lionel Loueke, Céline also performs solo, combining loops, effects, percussion, and guitar. She now employs this setup in her new project, SONIQS. SONIQS was founded together with multi-instrumentalist and sound experimenter Sebastian Merk, who has created a custom drum set combining keyboards, electronics, and video art, allowing him to operate freely and intuitively.
Among his tools are dissected, sampled vocal fragments from Céline’s voice, which he processes through sound filters and rhythmically reassembles, as well as entire vocal melodies forming the basis of compositions as looped “songlines.” Despite its complexity, the music maintains a sense of lightness and playful song quality. In addition to music, Céline Rudolph also writes texts independent of music, “poems,” which SONIQS spontaneously sets to music. These poems are constantly embarked upon a sonic journey during live performances, becoming new songs in the process. https://www.celinerudolph.com/about-biography-discography/
Brazaventure
