Joëlle Léandre

Joëlle Léandre
Joëlle Léandre
	File:Joëlle Léandre.jpg Joëlle Léandre at Cornelia Street Cafe; 2 July 2010 Photo: Claire Stefani
Background information
Born	12 September 1951 (age 73); Aix-en-Provence, France
Genres	Contemporary classical music, free improvisation, contemporary music
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer
Instruments	Upright bass, vocals
Associated acts	John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Les Diaboliques, Feminist Improvising Group

Joëlle Léandre (born 12 September 1951 in Aix-en-Provence, France) is a double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation.

In the field of contemporary music, she has performed with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain, and worked with Merce Cunningham and John Cage.^[1] Both Cage and Giacinto Scelsi have composed works specifically for her.

She gave an historic solo concert in "Jazz em Agosto" in 2007 (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal). In this same top jazz festival, Léandre performed also in the "Quartet Noir", a quartet with quite rare live performances, with Marilyn Crispell, Urs Leimgruber and Fritz Hauser.

She has also collaborated with some of the preeminent musicians in the fields of jazz and improvised music, including Derek Bailey, Barre Phillips, Anthony Braxton,^[2] George Lewis, India Cooke, Evan Parker, Irène Schweizer, Steve Lacy, Maggie Nicols, Fred Frith, Carlos Zingaro, John Zorn, Susie Ibarra, J. D. Parran, Kevin Norton, Eric Watson, Ernst Reijseger, Akosh S. and Sylvie Courvoisier.

In 1983 she became a member of the European Women Improvising Group (EWIG),^[1] which resulted from former Feminist Improvising Group and in later 1980s she co-founded the feminist improvising Trio Les Diaboliques, with Schweizer and Nicols.