During the awards ceremony in Paris on Thursday, the alto saxophonist and singer received the Django-Reinhardt Prize. Singer Veronica Swift, pianist Martial Solal and the Belmondo brothers were also rewarded.
Alto saxophonist and singer Thomas de Pourquery received the Django-Reinhardt Prize from the Jazz Academy on Thursday, rewarding in his eyes the best French jazz musician of the past year.
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“It’s a big surprise, I’m amazed, and I absolutely want to share this award with all the Supersonic comrades, group with which he published the album in the spring Back to the Moon, without whom I will be nothing»declared Thomas de Pourquery at the announcement of this prize, during a ceremony at the Pan Piper, a Parisian performance hall. “If my music speaks to people and can touch, it surprises me and it delights me”.
Thomas de Pourquery, 44, has been on all fronts of jazz for more than twenty years. Back to the Moonhis latest album with his band Supersonic, is at the crossroads of free-jazz, psychedelic rock, pop and electro. “We have rewarded a troublemaker of the jazz scene, but who knows perfectly well where he is going and what he is doing”declared François Lacharme, former publisher and president since 2004 of an institution created in 1954. Fifty-four members of an academy which has around sixty (journalists, writers, photographers, musicologists, programmers, animators, etc.) participated in the ballot.
2021 winners:
- Prix Django-Reinhardt (best musician of the year in France): Thomas de Pourquery (alto saxophonist/vocals)
- Grand Prix of the Jazz Academy (best record of the year): Coming Yesterday: Live at Salle Gaveau 2019 by pianist Martial Solal
- French Record Prize (best record recorded by a French musician): Brotherwood of the Belmondo Quintet
- European Musician Prize (rewarded for his work or recent news): Matthieu Michel (guitarist)
- Prize for Best Unpublished: In Harmony by Roy Hargrove (trumpet) and Mulgrew Miller (piano)
- Classical Jazz Prize: Duke Ladies – Vol.1 of the Laurent Mignard Duke Orchestra
- Vocal Jazz Award: Veronica Swift for This Bitter Earth
- Soul Award: Robert Finley for Sharecropper’s sound
- Blues Award: Cedric Burnside for I Be Trying
- Jazz Book Prize: Chick Corea by Ludovic Florin