BIX TOP ACT • CYRILLE AIMÉE

Cyrille Aimée grew up in a multilingual household full of music.

Where dancing was an everyday activity, accompanied by the Afro-Caribbean sounds of her mother's homeland, the Dominican Republic. The family home was in Samois-sur-Seine, the site of the Django Reinhardt Festival, and the teenage Cyrille would climb out of her bedroom window at night to mingle with the musicians, igniting her passion for jazz.After moving to New York City, her talent quickly gained recognition among her peers as an incomparable interpreter of song. She performed and recorded music with Roy Hargrove and stole the show in front of notoriously demanding audiences at the Harlem Apollo Theater. Steven Sondheim invited her to perform in a tribute at New York's City Center backed by Wynton Marsalis. Her 2019 album, Move On, featured versions of Sondheim's songs that received praise from Sondheim himself, and her version of "Marry Me a Little" was nominated for a 2019 Grammy Award.

At the height of their success in New York, new horizons beckoned. On a visit to New Orleans, she fell in love with the energy and diversity of the city and made it her home. Connecting all the dots with New York, she teamed up with producer and multi-instrumentalist Jake Sherman, and together they have created her latest album, A Fleur de Peau, to be released on a new label, London-based Whirlwind Recordings.

Combining the depth and sophistication of jazz, the immediacy of pop and the unstoppable dance rhythms of the Caribbean, it's more intimate and accessible than anything Cyrille has done before.

Instrumentation: tba.