The alto saxophonist and singer earned the Django-Reinhardt Prize at an event in Paris on Thursday. The Belmondo brothers, Veronica Swift, and pianist Martial Solal were also honored.
Thomas de Pourquery, an alto saxophone and singer, got the Django-Reinhardt Prize from the Jazz Academy on Thursday, honoring the best French jazz performer of the previous year, in his opinion.
The saxophone, once considered obsolete, is making a resurgence in pop and song.
“It’s a big surprise, and I’m amazed, and I absolutely want to share this award with all the Supersonic comrades, with whom he published the album Back to the Moon in the spring, and without whom I’d be nothing,” Thomas de Pourquery said at the Pan Piper, a Parisian performance hall, where the prize was announced. “It surprises and satisfies me if my music can speak to them and touch them.”
For more than two decades, Thomas de Pourquery, 44, has been active in all aspects of jazz. Return to the Moon His most recent CD, Supersonic, is a fusion of free jazz, psychedelic rock, pop, and electro. “We’ve honored a rebel in the jazz scene who understands exactly where he’s going and what he’s doing,” claimed François Lacharme, former publisher and president of an organization founded in 1954 since 2004. The poll was completed by 54 members of an academy of roughly sixty (journalists, writers, photographers, musicologists, programmers, animators, and so on).
2021 winners:
- Prix Django-Reinhardt (best musician of the year in France): Thomas de Pourquery (alto saxophonist/vocals)
- Grand Prix of the Jazz Academy (best record of the year): Coming Yesterday: Live at Salle Gaveau 2019 by pianist Martial Solal
- French Record Prize (best record recorded by a French musician): Brotherwood of the Belmondo Quintet
- European Musician Prize (rewarded for his work or recent news): Matthieu Michel (guitarist)
- Prize for Best Unpublished: In Harmony by Roy Hargrove (trumpet) and Mulgrew Miller (piano)
- Classical Jazz Prize: Duke Ladies – Vol.1 of the Laurent Mignard Duke Orchestra
- Vocal Jazz Award: Veronica Swift for This Bitter Earth
- Soul Award: Robert Finley for Sharecropper’Son
- Blues Award: Cedric Burnside for I Be Trying
- Jazz Book Prize: Chick Corea by Ludovic Florin