Vitet

Interview with
Bernard VITET Composer and interpreter

- In many books and articles you are quoted as a famous European jazz and free-jazz trumpeter. What happened ?

- I never felt that way. And there was a general evolution in music. Jazz and free-jazz, which were specialities, are now brought together by all living musics. For me jazz is no more a research area. There has been a double diversion : its initial intention was emancipation, and I moved away from jazz too.

- Is the music you write typical from a trumpet player ?

- In a way. I 'm very attached to melodies.

- For the last twenty years you've been collaborating with Jean-Jacques Birgé. You rarely sign alone.

- I'm more interested in group collaboration than in creative loneliness. It's a political choice.

- You're the main singer of CARTON. How long have you been singing ?

- Recently I had the desire to sing a song from the beginning to the end without stopping. I like to write small pieces, all their meaning condensed in a very short space of time.

- Do you really think it is popular music ?

- Popular music has a very wide scope. It means money, of course, but that's not the question. French pop music is my culture. It comes from Maurice Chevalier to Rita Mitsouko, from Schönberg to Thelonious Monk.

- Schönberg, Monk, is that popular music ?

- I'm not a traditionalist musician. Culture degenerates unless it's cosmopolitan. CARTON reviews all of today's music, its an exploratory land of new creative possibilities. Multimedia will help new fusions, even the most unexpected. This will give birth to new kinds of composition. On several songs Jean-Jacques Birgé also used artificial intelligence programs, it's very exciting.

- Do you mean the computer has written the music ?

- No more than the violin writes the concerto ! The first idea usually comes from Jean-Jacques who writes the words, they become music, then we tune up, and we work on it, it's a kind of table ping-pong. Sometimes I change a word here and there, Jean-Jacques organises the sound. It's hard for me to finish a piece. When it's done it doesn't belong to me anymore, it's a drama !