Didier Lockwood gathered today his most emblematic traveling companions: Video

11.02. – Happy Birthday !!! 1956, Calais. Didier Lockwood is coming to enlarge a family of artists: his father is teacher and violin teacher, his mother amateur painter, and his elder brother Francis, a talented budding pianist very attracted by jazz; Didier naturally inherits the passion of music. When young, he became passionate about the paternal instrument and entered the Conservatoire at the age of six.

In addition to school and swimming competitions, the young violinist attends the Conservatoire and his private teacher classes daily. He receives the demanding teaching of the excellent Karl Flesh method, which allows him to develop a prodigious looser of the fingers of his right hand. This technique will be invaluable for him to approach jazz.

Didier Lockwood joined the Lyric Orchestra of Théâtre Municipal de Calais at 13 years old. He is 16 when he is doubly rewarded for his efforts and his virtuosity by winning the First Prize of violin of the National Conservatory of Calais, as well as the First National Prize of contemporary music of SACEM for his composition for violin prepared.

The young violinist admires classical music and his eminent composers. However, a new passion will soon germinate in him: improvised music and jazz, to which his brother initiates him. He discovers at this time another approach to music, focused on the oral tradition. Although he was first elected to the final exam of the Ecole Normale de Musique at the age of 17, he preferred to join the legendary Magma group rather than try to enter the Paris Conservatoire.

In 1973, he made his debut in this legendary group, alongside the percussionist Christian Vander, then joined in 1976 the Zao group, created by two former members of Magma.

As early as 1978, he entered the world of Jazz through the big door, working with André Ceccarelli, François Jeanneau, Didier Levallet and Henri Texier.

From then on, he will approach for nearly ten years all the formations he still loves today: from string trio to solo, from quartet to fusion group, without forgetting some unforgettable encounters, from UZEB to Gordon Beck or from Martial Solal to Michel Petrucciani.

In 1994, he celebrated his 20 years of career, marked by nearly 1800 concerts around the world and numerous awards. The following year, he made his first American album: New York Rendez-vous.

As part of the Festival of the Opal Coast, he composed in 1996, with the Orchester National de Lille, a concerto entitled “Les Mouettes”, which will be a great success internationally.

In March 2000, he published a new album, Tribute to Stéphane Grappelli, which has received many awards since its release: Diapason d’Or, Choc Jazzman, Selection FIP.

In the spring of 2001, Didier created, with Indian dancer Raghunath Manet and percussionist Ri Murugan, the show Omkara, a musical encounter between jazz and Indian music.

In addition, Didier publishes in 2003 a double album, solo and quartet, with perfumes elsewhere, Globe-Trotter, and an autobiographical work, Profession Jazzman, improvised life.

Enriched by more than 4,000 concerts and a few tours around the world, the violinist’s music has reached full maturity, which he transmits in many master classes around the world and, since 2001, within the Center of Music Didier Lockwood of Dammarie Les Lys, now integrated into the higher education pole of Paris-Boulogne-Billancourt.

In 2005, Didier, together with his now-then-former wife, Caroline Casadesus, created a new show, the Jazz and the Diva, which crossed the musical horizons, at first sight antithetical, of jazz. and the classic. This show aroused such enthusiasm among the public, that the creation of a second component was self-imposed in 2008, and each of the two opus was the subject of an album.

In addition, Didier recorded the same year, in duet with his brother Francis, the elegant and intimate album “Brothers”.

Thus, after several years of touring Europe alongside Mike Stern, then Billy Cobham, John Abercrombie and Victor Bailey, he reformed the Didier Lockwood Group (DLG), with Jean-Marie Ecay, Paco Séry and Linley Marthe .

At the same time, Didier gathered today his most emblematic traveling companions to celebrate in 2013/2014 his forty years of career, in the course of which the distinctions did not fail: The Victoires de la Musique, the Golden Django, the Prize of the Sacem and the Academy of Jazz, the Django Reinhardt Prize, or his election to the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honor and Officer of National Merit and Arts and Letters.