Melody Gardot is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She likes to mix influences since her beginnings, jazz, but also folk music, bossa nova, fado, pop, rock. In France, the title: behind the rainbowadapted from over the rainbow in duet with Eddy Mitchell, bewitched, as did his various tours.
She will be on tour and in two festivals: The Django Reinhardt festival, from June 23 to 26 in Fontainebleau and the Nice Jazz Festival from July 15 to 19. These will be great opportunities to sing his latest tracks from his new album: Between them twoproduced with the immense complicity and talent of Franco-Brazilian pianist Philippe Powell.
franceinfo: It’s amazing how things work between you and Philippe Powell. You talk about ‘dance’, but here, it seems like a kind of ‘fusion’ between a pianist and a voice.
Melody Gardot: It was really my dream to do something with him because we have a lot of similarities. We like the same music, we have a classical base. After him, he is Brazilian and I have a bit of the Philadelphia blues. I fell totally in love with his composition, There where he lives in mein my previous album sunset in the blue what we did together.
I had a crush when I started working with Philippe Powell for ‘Sunset in the blue’ in Paris. After a few moments spent together, I said to myself: hey! I feel so good, I dream of making an album with him.
Melody Gardotat franceinfo
We feel calm. Does that mean that the further you go, the more you succeed in finding yourself?
I do not know. I am still a woman. It’s funny because yesterday someone said to me: “You look very, very calm ma’am“, I said: cool! I must admit that I have an incredible chance to do this kind of art in life. But, I think that I stress myself when it is necessary to look at all there is to do and how I can get there. So when I rush, when I’m delayed, etc… I’m not at all calm. But it’s true that my way of stressing can be different from those of others. It takes a lot to piss me off anyway!
You found your calling very early on. It’s true that there was this very serious bicycle accident which cost you a large and heavy hospitalization and this time which finally allowed you to find yourself more, to discover more this voice. What place does your voice hold in your life?
It’s true that after my accident, I couldn’t speak. Also, it’s been a long road to just reforming and pronouncing words, letters, syllables, etc.
Melody Gardotat franceinfo
It was amazing because I had like a little Pandora’s box of thoughts, of feelings that I had in me and since I couldn’t express them, they just stayed there, they added up. One day, it was crazy, with the training, the therapy, I started talking again. Then, I have a song that came out, just like that, because there was too much stuff left in it and I started writing. As I had learned to speak again with the guitar in my hands, I had a way of associating the words with the notes.
You revisit stronger than usa classic of French cinema by Claude Lelouch, A man and a woman. Is it hard to sing in French?
How hard it is to speak. When I spoke to Philippe, I told him: listen, if there’s ever a cover you want to do, don’t hesitate to tell me. And it was weird because he didn’t know that I watched those movies and that I was a fan but an ultimate Lelouch fan. Then, two or three weeks later, he calls me: “Alright Melody. I have a song. I think it would be cool if the two of us could do it together Louder than us”. And I laughed, I had tears in my eyes and I said: but you can’t understand, it’s one of my favorite songs and yes, here we go!
I would like to talk about the scene. You will be three evenings at the legendary Olympia in Paris, with the red letters from November 21 to 23, 2022. What does it mean to meet the public?
It touches me, always, enormously. It upsets me. So, to have the opportunity to do so, it does me a lot of good. This year is particularly special because all these concerts and all these magical moments were also supported by my French producer, who is called Gérard Drouot. He just left us. And I think that instead of having ‘Melody Gardot’ on the bill at the Olympia, what I would like to do is just write: ‘Thank you Gérard’ because the first person who held me when I was arrived in France, it was him. It was he who had the conviction and the courage to complete an Olympia for me, who fought to support me and create the buzz at the start. When I was 23, he said, “You will become a star!“Everything we do here is thanks to a lot of things, but there was necessarily a thank you to be made to Gérard. He was my Jiminy Cricket.
Melody Gardot will be on June 23 in Wolfiheim, on June 24 at the Django Reihnardt Festival in Fontainebleau, on the 29 in Niort, on July 1 at the TSF Jazz Festival in Chantilly, on the 18 in Nice, on the 24 in Marciac etc…