Cyrille Aimee & the ASU Concert Jazz Orchestra at Tempe Center for the Arts

Cyrille Aimée

Vocalist Cyrille Aimée was primarily raised in France by a French father and Dominican mother. As a curious child in Samois-sur-Seine, she would sneak out of her bedroom window to wander into the nearby gypsy encampments filled with those attending the annual Django Reinhardt Festival.

She quickly fell in love with gypsy music and way of life; years later she would sing on street corners with friends while traveling across Europe. While in the midst of one such odyssey, she found herself at the Montreux Jazz Festival, where she won first prize in the vocal competition – which included the financing of her first self-produced album....

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Cyrille Aimée

Vocalist Cyrille Aimée was primarily raised in France by a French father and Dominican mother. As a curious child in Samois-sur-Seine, she would sneak out of her bedroom window to wander into the nearby gypsy encampments filled with those attending the annual Django Reinhardt Festival.

She quickly fell in love with gypsy music and way of life; years later she would sing on street corners with friends while traveling across Europe. While in the midst of one such odyssey, she found herself at the Montreux Jazz Festival, where she won first prize in the vocal competition – which included the financing of her first self-produced album.

Aimée’s musical outlook is reflected in an emphasis on the guitar, an instrument with an indigenous form in nearly every culture of the world — and it was the sound of the gypsy guitar that inspired her to become a musician. Aimée—who as a child also lived in Paris, Cameroon, Singapore and the Dominican Republic—later became fascinated with Brazilian guitar, and her music reveals a thorough understanding of bossa nova and samba idioms.

She now she happily tours the world with her band as well as in a duo setting with Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo. Aimée’s talents also recently caught the attention of Stephen Sondheim, who cast her in an Encores Special Presentation at New York City’s City Center in November 2013.

Arizona State University Concert Jazz Band

The Concert Jazz Band in the ASU Herberger Institute School of Music, directed by Jeff Libman, is the premier large ensemble of the Jazz Studies program in which students study and perform music from the classic big band repertoire, as well as commissioned works, student compositions and recent works by contemporary jazz composers. Its recent guests artists appearing with the Concert Jazz Band include Eric Alexander, Jerry Bergonzi, Wycliffe Gordon, Bob Mintzer, Dick Oatts, Eric Schneider, Joel Spencer, and Scott Wendholt.

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