VIOLETTE

Growing up on a small island off the French Atlantic coast, Violette fully embraced the beauty and unspoiled nature of her surroundings, dividing her days between sports, books and music. However, in her tweens she had to trade her beloved outdoors for the urban lifestyle and restraints of big-city Paris. There she took up the study of traditional percussions at a music conservatory, followed by classical voice training. Being the free spirit that Violette is, she soon felt constricted by the rigidity of the academic music environment. Yet, it wasn’t until a chance listen to an Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong CD in a record store, that she realized her vocal improvisations on Mozart sonatas weren’t as inappropriate as her music teachers had thought, just symptoms of her need for greater artistic self expression. As her love for jazz grew stronger, Violette started exploring related styles such as R&B, soul and gospel. She cites Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder and contemporaries – Lizz Wright and Ledisi – as influences in addition to Ella Fitzgerald, whom she refers to as her “musical godmother”. Just as she was not able to express her “Innervoice” while studying at the conservatory, she soon found herself limited by the exacting academic lifestyle she led. So, having completed liberal arts studies and then mathematics at Paris-Sorbonne University, Violette finally gave in to her passion – music – and decided to make the move to Boston in order to enroll at the infamous Berklee College of Music.While living in Boston, Violette started performing her original songs at many clubs on the East Coast, leading to the release of Innervoice (2009), and Joie de Vivre (2010), named after the school prize she received while in Kindergarten. Not afraid to embrace her inner child, she keeps sharing her zest for living with listeners through her soulful and pop-oriented brand of jazz music. Her frank and poetic lyrics in English and French, combined with jazz-infused arrangements and strong pop sensibilities make her compositions at once upbeat and sassy, sensual and intimate. Now calling New York home, this modern cosmopolitan has already performed internationally in locales as diverse as Paris, New-York, Boston, Montreal, Senegal, Prague and Dubai in addition to slots at major festivals such as Jazz a Sete, Jazz a Vannes and Jazz a Crest.The sophisticated pop Singer-Songwriter is currently working on her fourth album, set to be released late 2012.