Céline Rudolph - Soniqs

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2023
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 48:21
Size: 111,9 MB
Art: Front

(3:30) 1. Good News
(4:49) 2. Seven Butterflies
(6:30) 3. Sundance
(2:01) 4. Birds In The Sky
(5:43) 5. Inner Room I
(5:35) 6. The Sun In Me
(5:51) 7. Footprints
(4:26) 8. 69 Année Érotique
(7:16) 9. Inner Room Ii
(2:36) 10. The Muse

Vocalist and composer Céline Rudolph glides between Berlin, São Paulo, Paris and New York, between tongues and genres, always landing in the very heart of music. „Music is like breathing, it was there ever since I could remember“ Céline Rudolph says and recollects how her father always played a break when jamming on the guitar, so that there was a space for his children to create improvised lines or percussive fills. Born in Berlin and raised with her parents’ rich record collection, the daughter of a Frenchwoman from Bordeaux and a cosmopolitan musical enthusiast from Berlin, started singing along with an LP from João Gilberto performing the Brazilian classic “Rosa Morena” to an LP at the age of five. Her mother was singing French chansons to her at home, while Céline learned to play Nat Adderley’s “WorkSong” on her recorder.

She picked up the piano and started composing as an autodidact, then started writing French songs on the guitar, which became her main tool of expression. In short: multi-path orientation was on the cards from the very beginning. After university studies of rhetorics and philosophy, she realized that music exerted a much stronger pull, so she switched to a degree in vocal jazz and composition at Hochschule der Künste Berlin with mentors David Friedman, Jerry Granelli, Kirk Nurock and Catherine Gayer. Soon, she plunged into African music and studied with the percussionist Famoudou Konaté in West Africa. Her love of Brazilian music led her to São Paulo where she met Rodolfo Stroeter who produced three of her albums and four tours across Europe and Brazil so far: The albums are BRAZAVENTURE, METAMORFLORES (enja records) and SALVADOR (Verve,Universal).

Since 2015 she is collaborating with New York based Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, having recorded the duo album OBSESSION and then playing together at 12th Jarasum Int. Jazz Festival in 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. Since then, the duo toured Europe, Asia and Africa (including a tour to West Africa on behalf of the Goethe Institute). The album OBSESSION reached the annual list of the German Critics Award „Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik“, and won Céline Rudolph the prestigious German Jazz Award ECHO JAZZ 2018 for best jazz vocalist. Now, praised as „a jewel of European jazz vocals“ by the French radio station, TSF, having recorded numerous albums with many wonderful musicians including Gary Peacock, Bob Moses, Naná Vasconcelos, Diego Figueiredo and Marcos Suzano, and esteemed by colleagues like Bobby McFerrin, Lee Konitz or Jay Clayton, the adventurous pearl fisher sailed from Berlin to Brooklyn for her new album PEARLS (out 21st of June 2019).

Co-producer Jamire Williams: „I’ve never heard anything like Céline’s music, she writes in such a unique way, and her vocal sound is second to none. Her vibes and flow in connection with what our band has created make this production so special.“ Besides performing with Lionel Loueke and PEARLS, Céline Rudolph started a solo programme combining loops, effects, percussion and guitar.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/celine-rudolph

Soniqs

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Céline Rudolph, Lionel Loueke - Obsession

Styles: Vocal And Guitar Jazz
Year: 2017
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 48:00
Size: 111,4 MB
Art: Front

(4:32) 1. C'est un Love Song
(5:30) 2. New Day
(6:56) 3. Veuve Malienne
(5:02) 4. Archaic
(5:33) 5. Here Comes the Rain
(3:55) 6. O Leãozinho
(5:22) 7. Morning Blues
(3:51) 8. Le Vent du Nord
(3:31) 9. Fábula
(3:44) 10. Rêve Obsession

A singer playing the guitar. A guitarist who sings. An album on which these two exceptional musicians show that in music, too, the whole can be bigger than the sum of its parts. Their common "obsession" opens up musical horizons, sounds like Jazz and singer-songwriter-elegance, like Cotonou, Rio, Memphis and Berlin.

It is music that speaks of the passion that loves, of deep moments, life, pleasure and the Blues. This duo, which most often sounds like a band, sometimes even like an orchestra, sings ten glorious, spontaneous songs, sometimes in English, sometimes French, sometimes in Celinish or Lionelish.

You may think, after just one listen, that you ve known these songs all your life, but there is really only one cover among them (Caetano Velosos "O Leãozinho"), while the rest of the songs were written by either Céline Rudolph or Lionel Loueke or both of them. Make no mistake: this is a complex, diverse album, while at the same time homogeneous and subtle, aptly titled Obsession. By Editorial Reviews
https://www.amazon.com/Obsession-C%C3%A9line-Rudolph-Lionel-Loueke/dp/B075GBJ6MH

Obsession

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Celine Rudolph - Brazaventure

Styles: Vocal
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/

Brazaventure

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