LOUISE JALLU

With more than twenty years of bandoneon behind her, Louise has already proven her legitimacy as an accomplished musician in France After two successful performances at the Münster International Jazz Festival (2023) and at the European Jazz Network Showcase (2023), the international career of the bandoneon player, famous in France, is very promising.

She started her music career very young, when she joined the conservatoire (the French National School of Music) in the north of Paris at the age of 5. The young girl, lulled by the sounds of Bartok and Piazzolla at home, developed her curiosity for different kinds of music thanks to the institution founded by Bernard Cavanna,  but also delved deeper into the rich fabric of tango, her passion, which later became a profession. During her training, she learned from great peers considered among the best experts such as César Stroscio and Juan José Mosalini. They provided her the fundamental qualities needed to make herself a name in the tango circle: she masters the history and the instrument without resorting to simple mime. 

Year after year, Louise develops her career on the international level. She obtains her music diploma and wins the second prize in the solo bandoneon category of the International Competition of Klingenthal (Germany). She’s not even 18 when she decides to create her own group, the Louise Jallu Quartet, while accumulating collaborations of all kinds: with the Greek singer Katerina Fotinaki, Sanseverino, with jazzmen such as Claude Barthélémy and Claude Tchamitchian, and the Argentinian virtuoso, Tomas Gubitsch.

She released her first album « Francesita » in 2019, inspired by a book by Albert Londres, about white woman slavery, and by the music of Enrique Delfino, the famous Argentinian tango pianist.

In her arrangements, Louise Jallu prefers to escape from the original to trace her own originality from this furrow. The French artist chooses not to play the revival card, but breaks instead away from the original, whether Piazzolla (in his album Piazzolla 2021), or the great names of classical music, jazz or popular song (in JEU; released on 8/03/2024).

A classical piano, a double bass that roars its jazzy spirit, an electric guitar rubbing shoulders with rock, and drums flirting with contemporary music, led by the bandoneon which ingeniously binds and loosens the whole. A music that goes beyond borders.

Louise Jallu says: "If we claim to bring something new, we have to do something else. Take your music as if it were a standard and take it elsewhere."

In JEU as in Piazzolla 2021; she takes a vivifying tack that is as scrupulous as it is critical, slowing the tempo, clearing new harmonic pathways, reformulating the melody.

Chosen by the international Jury of the European Jazz Netzwork 2023

Resident at LA VILLA MEDICIS in January 2022

Nominated for the Victoires du Jazz 2021, category Revelation (PRIX FRANK TÉNOT)

Second prize for the International Competition of Klingenthal (Germany), category solo bandoneon