Cyrille Aimee & Nicholas Payton Duo for CMC International Jazz Fest 2019 at The Colored Musicians Club

Cyrille Aimée co-presents a newly-minted, innovative duo along with Artist-in-Residence Nicholas Payton.

Improvisation is not just a technique for Cyrille Aimée, its a way of life. That adventure began in the small town of Samois-sur-Seine in France, where the young Cyrille Aimée (Sur-real M-A) was introduced to a wealth of diverse music by her French father and Dominican mother: everything from Michael Jackson to French chanson, Flamenco to country-western. She and her sister would dance around the living room, instilling a gleeful abandon and warm groove that still shine through her music to this day....

read more

Cyrille Aimée co-presents a newly-minted, innovative duo along with Artist-in-Residence Nicholas Payton.

Improvisation is not just a technique for Cyrille Aimée, its a way of life. That adventure began in the small town of Samois-sur-Seine in France, where the young Cyrille Aimée (Sur-real M-A) was introduced to a wealth of diverse music by her French father and Dominican mother: everything from Michael Jackson to French chanson, Flamenco to country-western. She and her sister would dance around the living room, instilling a gleeful abandon and warm groove that still shine through her music to this day.

The acclaimed vocalist ventured from singing on street corners in Europe to dazzling audiences at the worlds most prestigious jazz festivals; from sneaking out to sing in gypsy encampments in her native France to acting on Broadway; from braving the notoriously tough audiences at New Yorks Apollo Theatre to being called a rising star in the galaxy of jazz singers by the New York Times. Among countless accolades, Aimée won the Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition and the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition.

Her most recent album, LIVE, is the closing chapter of her years of touring with her innovative two-guitar line-up. As an actress, Aimée co-starred with Bernadette Peters in a Stephen Sondheim tribute at New Yorks City Center. This has inspired her into digging deeper in the Sondheim repertoire for her next project. Shes shared her story via master classes, a TEDx talk, and an address at the Conference on World Affairs.

show less