Nominated for the 2021 Victoires du Jazz,

Revelation category (PRIX FRANK TÉNOT)

Winner of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation 2019, jazz & classical music category

Resident at LA VILLA MEDICIS in January 2022

Learn More About Louise Jallu...

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You have to see her bending silently over her bandoneon’s bellows as if she was bending over the pages of a pop-up book splayed wide open with its dual folds resembling a keyboard. The one that belonged to a dazzled child, and then the one belonging to an artist on a quest for transgression. The musician seems to include in her gaze the miniature life path for which each cardboard fold represents a memorable stage. Discovering the bandoneon alongside her older sister, growing up in a family of avid music lovers, a home where the sounds of Thelonious Monk’s piano would cross those of Béla Bartók. Learning the “bando” at the tender age of five, taking classes at the music conservatory in her native city, Gennevilliers, just outside of Paris, where the teachers were some of the greatest soloists from around the world: Kristina Kuusisto from Finland, Jean-Baptiste Henry from France, two Argentinians César Stroscio and Juan José Mosalini. Musical analysis and composition under the direction of composer Bernard Cavanna, director of the non-conformist establishment. Distinctions: second prize at the Klingenthal International Accordion Competition before her 17th birthday, graduation in music studies just after this birthday, a 2019 laureate at the Fondation Lagardère in the category of jazz and classical music, residency at the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis in January 2022. And creations: several ensembles (including the Louise Jallu Quartet), works (Jacques Rebotier, Bernard Cavanna – more than one opus -, Klaus Peter Werani…), and her own albums (Francesita, Piazzolla 2021, Jeu).

You have to see her pump out popular sources of musical energies from her folded and buttoned up Pandora’s box: Greek singer Katerina Fotinaki, her Italian counterpart Sanseverino, avant-gardists like György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, emancipated Argentines ranging from Astor Piazzolla to Gustavo Beytelmann and Tomás Gubitsch, and those (who for lack of more accurte ranking) have been categorized in jazz such as musicians like Claude Barthelemy, Médéric Collignon, Claude Tchamitchian, and Michel Portal in order to infuse life into so many other genres, not only tango, in an adventurous if not experimental perspective.

You also have to see her as a role model for generations to come. A role model to listen to so as not to imitate her and so as not to limit yourself. A role model who would never run a school and yet does teach, that is, of course, at the music conservatory in Gennevilliers. The bandoneon in utter freedom, and vice-versa.

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Pierre Gervasoni