【来日】Alexandra Grimal, Naoto Yamagishi: 山㟁直人

Alexandra Grimal is a saxophonist and  composer.

She has recorded 16 albums as a leader and more than forty as a sidewoman.
She is regularly invited in residencies internationally and receives several commissions as a composer.

In residency at Scène Nationale d'Orléans from 2015 to 2017, she created the trio kankū and  the concert version of her opera la vapeur au-dessus du riz in collaboration with author Antoine Cegarra and choreographer Chiara Taviani. She performs internationally in festivals such as Musica, Donaueschingen, the Paris Philharmonic, Krakow Philharmonic, Parco della Musica, Dijon Opera, Japan... Trained in jazz saxophone at the Sibelius Academy, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Royal Conservatory of The Hague, under the guidance of John Ruocco. She has studied singing with Donatienne Michel Dansac, Martina Catella, Parvathy Baul in India and Wasifuddin Dagar.

Noted in 2007 at the Concours International de Jeunes Solistes de Fribourg, she has since received numerous soloist awards, as well as two MacDowell Fellowships and a Tavitian Fellowship as a composer. She released her first album Shape in 2009, with Antonin Rayon and Emmanuel Scarpa. After her second album Seminare Vento, she moved to New York for two years, returning with Owls Talk, featuring a prestigious cast including Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. Alexandra Grimal also has led the ensemble Nāga (state commission - Marc Ducret, Nelson Veras, Benoît Delbecq, Stéphane Galland, Jozef Dumoulin and Lynn Cassiers). 

All her albums have won awards, including Andromeda, with her American quartet (Todd Neufeld, Thomas Morgan and Tyshawn Sorey), released in 2012.

She has been a soloist with the Orchestre National de Jazz, in Joëlle Léandre's tentet Can You Hear Me? and continues to collaborate with artists from other art forms. She performs as a singer with the Dedalus ensemble, notably in David Lang's Death Speaks.

Her piece for symphony orchestra humus, commissioned by the Philharmonie de Paris and the Paris Mozart Orchestra (PMO) - Claire Gibault was premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Her melologue le jardin en mouvement, a piece for narrator and ensemble featuring the voice of Suliane Brahim, a new PMO commission based on a text by landscape architect Gilles Clément, was performed in symphonic version at the Château de Chambord festival, where she was composer-in-residence. She also recorded a second saxophone solo refuge released in 2022 on the American label Relative Pitch Records.

Singer Donatienne Michel-Dansac premiered L'enfant invisible in 2024 at the Salzburg Mozarteum, a piece for solo voice commissioned by the performer. She receives commissions from various ensembles.

Alexandra Grimal was professor of composition at the Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland from 2021 to 2023.
She has a new trio Fly Line with Yuko Oshima and Jozef Dumoulin and a new duo with pianist Sophia Domancich dans l'arbre, playing her music. She is called as an interpreter in various bands and ensembles,  with musicians such as Eve Risser, Matthieu Donarier, Lionel Garcin la grande volière, Hans Lüdeman TEE Ensemble...  Alexandra Grimal received the “100 Femmes de Culture 2023” award.

山㟁 直人　naoto yamagishi

ドラマー、パーカッショニスト。

音楽以前の音楽を探求し、自然や日常からの音や流れから生じる“リズム・響き・間”を大きなうねりにのせ、あらゆる空間を音と共に旅をする。

13才の頃からドラムを始める。ドラムを阿部拓也氏に師事。国内外、ジャンルを問わず様々なアーティスト（ミュージシャン、ダンサー、詩人、写真家、書道家、華道家、画家、メディアアーティストなど）と共演し、現在はソロやグループ、またサポートドラマーとしてヨーロッパや日本で活動中。主なグループやプロジェクトに松樹千年翠(書道家白石雪妃、華道家塚越応駿とのプロジェクト)、En Route (画家上田暁子とのプロジェクト)、La Dent du Chat En Dormir(Laurent Rodz /Franceとのデュオ)、usva (Jone Takamäki/Finland, Lauri Hyvärinen/Finland, とのトリオ)など他にも多数。