GUILHEM FLOUZAT

Drummer, composer and songwriter Guilhem Flouzat has more than one trick up his sleeve. He produced an album of standards with pianist Sullivan Fortner another one of songs for which he wrote music and lyrics, sung by Isabel Sorling. His drumming, honed with teachers like Eric Harland, Dan Weiss, Mark Guiliana and John Riley, always serves his compositional approach.

He perfected his beat and shaped his musical identity during the 7 years he spent in New York, where he collaborated with the likes of Lionel Loueke, Becca Stevens, Steve Wilson, Dave Liebman, Linda Oh and Gilad Hekselman. The grandson of pianist and organist Henriette Puig-Roget, he grew up under the spell of Ravel and Poulenc. Literary studies gave him the taste for seizing experience with words. These are the sources of a musical universe both narrative and profound.

For ten years now, he has been following his own compass on the european and American scene, being a sideman for Youn Sun Nah, Camila Meza and Seamus Blake among others. His debut album, “One Way…Or Another”, hailed as “the best thing to happen to French Jazz in a long time” by journalist Vincent Bessières, saw him play duo with Tigran Hamasyan. He joined the Sunnyside label for his sophomore effort “Portraits”, a series of musical depictions of the eight musicians on the album, amongst whom Becca Stevens and Ben Wendel. “A Thing Called Joe”, a trio offering delving into tin pan alley repertoire was praised as a “classic” by French and American reviews, and followed by several tours with Sullivan Fortner. The same year the collaborative effort “Constant Stranger” was released on Fresh Sound/New Talent featuring Richard Sears on piano and Martin Nevin on bass, reminiscent of Ellington and Scriabine.

His first full album as a songwriter featuring Isabel Sorling, “Turn The Sun To Green” will be released on Shed Music on 02.21.2021, a series of tunes imagined late at night on his neighbor’s piano in Washington Heights, just before returning to Paris.