Music Is My Field with Raphaël Imbert

During his exploratory travels in the southern United States, Raphaël Imbert met painter, university professor, musician, folklorist and ethnomusicologist Art Rosenbaum in Athens, Georgia. This meeting opened doors for Raphaël to opportunities for his own path as an active musician-researcher who experiments by combining free music, free expressionism, and the bop language (which in a way is comparable to bluegrass virtuosity). He has learned one thing: music is everywhere, and if each encounter is a celebration, anything can happen, and anything can be created!  

‘Music is My Field’ is the field project to demonstrate this liveliness, this popular art of hospitality, improvisation, and alterity, specifically within the musical styles of the Southeast and Appalachia. The project redefines the cultural bonds that exist between the musicians of a music with an established geographical origin and a recognized universal dimension. Between France and the United States, a comparison between popular and avant-garde, sacred and profane, industry and creativity, memory and innovation, and rurality and urbanity that will allow a rich and deep reflection for all participants. 

In this context where the conception of professional and amateur does not matter, there is a diversity, an inventiveness, and a heterogeneity that must be nourished and shown. In 2023, Raphaël Imbert returns to the road of his past explorations and future encounters through a program of four filmed recording sessions with the most emblematic artists of these burgeoning aesthetics. The outcome is an album, a documentary, a podcast, and then a tour in the United States and Europe. First stop: Atlanta, Georgia! 

Raphaël Imbert is a jazz saxophonist, conductor, composer and the founder of Compagnie Nine Spirit. He has been developing an educational project since 2003, offering an improvisation method for chamber music ensembles in his master classes. In 2010, Raphaël became a member of the research group “Improtech”, which studies the relationship between improvisation and new technologies. His project is a field exploration in the United States on traditional musical roots, oral musical knowledge, and their link with improvisation and new technologies. 

Journalist, director and freelance photographer, Régis Michel has been traveling the planet for nearly 35 years. As such, he has directed more than 130 films for the programs Thalassa and Faut Pas Rêver. He still travels with his camera on his shoulder. 

La Compagnie Nine Spirit connects traditional and contemporary jazz, written and improvised music. It offers a bridge to all musical and artistic genres, willing to create a space for fusion and encounters. La Compagnie Nine Spirit was founded in 1999 by Raphaël Imbert. Amandine Habib (classical pianist) and Max Atger (jazz saxophonist) are now building together the artistic line.