French musician Sofiane Pamart is said to be “the pianist of rap”. Classical training and hip-hop influence have forged an artist who puts his virtuosity at the service of a “borderless” style. He is releasing his second album this Friday, letter.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
If he launches a second solo album of neo-classical compositions on the piano, Sofiane Pamart is an artist who is not easily defined. When he lets his fingers run over the white and black keys, worlds that do not often rub shoulders become intertwined. It’s not the first time that classical music meets rap, but the pianist, by collaborating with many French rappers in recent years, plays his part in the contemporary version of this fusion.
He has the training of a classical pianist, but the mentality of a rapper, he says, when we reach him in France by phone. He’s got style too: casual but chic look, sunglasses, jewelry on his fingers and around his neck, and even “grillz” on his teeth on occasion.
For him, it is not even a question of “breaking the codes”.
My strength is never having put a boundary between these genres and that’s what changes everything, says the 31-year-old pianist. Naturally, I go to the styles of music that were around me as a child. I listened to rap and I did classical at the conservatory. I was going from one world to another.
Sofiane Pamart
Between the age of 7 and 25, Sofiane Pamart studied piano and classical music at the Lille Conservatory. His mother enrolled him there after seeing all the pleasure and aptitude of the young Sofiane who, at the time, was having fun on a small keyboard of ten keys. “She realized very quickly that I had perfect pitch, that I could reproduce by ear all the melodies I heard on the radio or in films”, says the musician, whom the media French qualify as virtuoso.
As soon as he accessed this opportunity to devote all his time to it, he realized that the piano was his calling. “I was lucky enough to discover that very early on. The piano never left my life again, he says. He has always been an extension of my body. As soon as I touch a piano, it always goes well, my fingers go naturally on the keys. There is a lot of work, technique, but it has always been a game for me. »
Forget about technology
In the halls of the conservatory (from which he came out with a gold medal), thanks to masters who “explained music to him from the inside”, he discovered the classical composers – “Chopin, Schumann, Ravel” –, who inspire him. “Without that, I would never have gone to them, because that’s not the music I listened to at all,” he says.
In their works, he hears the stories, the adventures that the music tells. This influence is “everywhere in [ses] works” today. However, at one time, a “rebellious” side made him want to depart from the codes he had learned.
I wanted to unlearn everything. For years I tried to forget the theoretical way of looking at music, I was fed up. Now I realize that I had to forget it so that I could bring it out naturally, without thinking about it. It will give, for example, a piece that has a color like Chopin, connotations. In my compositions, we have the result of all my influences.
Sofiane Pamart
University licenses in musicology and piano interpretation in hand, Sofiane Pamart knows that he will pursue this dream he has had for so long. He wants to be a popular pianist. “I had this feeling that the fact of playing gave me, but also this feeling of valorization thanks to this instrument, he says. I knew it wouldn’t leave my life. And afterwards, I saw the artists who fascinated me on TV, who dressed in such a way, who went on trips, and I said to myself that I wanted to do the same. But it was never pianists on the other hand, it was singers, rappers, fashion people. »
He wanted to have this life, to be an artist who rises to the top of the charts, through the piano. He has always composed his own tunes. “When I was a child, it was a game. From the age of 10 to 18, I stopped composing to focus on developing new techniques, understanding music. But I understood that interpretation, for me, was for learning, it was not an end in itself; just one way. »
The journey in the agreements
When he goes back to composing, his touch becomes clearer. Like the great composers he admires, he tells stories. His creations are colorful, reflect encounters, travels, emotions. A cinematographic quality pervades his pieces, as does a certain poetry.
To reach the heights he aims for, Sofiane Pamart begins by founding a rap group, Rhapsodie, where verses are recited over melodies on the piano. Then, he began to compose for various hip-hop artists, from the Belgian Scylla (with whom he recorded two albums) to the slammer Grand Corps Malade via Maes, Lord Esperanza and Koba LaD.
In 2019, he launched his first solo opus, Planet. A musical travel diary, which is very well received. Today, his second album continues to talk about his nomadic side, “in a framework that travels between melancholy and hope”, but even more so. “Like a film, with a first scene at the beginning, a last scene at the end and twists as you go”, he recounts the last two years during which he went to meet his audience. “I felt so grateful that I wanted to dedicate my album to him, because he is part of my daily life,” says the pianist. Artists live by the public, not independently of it. I receive messages, I see how my music enters the lives of strangers, I meet people and I see emotions. It touches me and it inspires me a lot. »
As he continues to play concerts around the world, grow his audience, reach more and more people (rap, classical and other admirers), the pianist with a rapper mentality surely has not done being inspired.
Piano
letter
Sofiane Pamart