JULIETTE - Portrait number 3 of XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ]

Clotilde is a French vocalist, flutist, author, compositor, performer and more recently a film director.
Her artistic approach stands at the crossroad of various influences. She aims to challenge what can be done with any artistic medium in order to reach her full expression, escaping from standard configurations to express her love for freedom. “Her true purpose: challenging both song and voice in order to reach their full expression.” Obari Toshio – JazzCritics (JP)

While studying for a Master in Management, she wrote and directed her first musical, Georgia, which played to packed houses at the Bataclan (Paris). This was when Clotilde realized that music and the stage were much more than a crazy fancy, but a real, vital necessity for her. Drawn primarily by improvisation, Afro-American music and jazz, she made these her initial focus.

Even if she entered the Conservatoire aged five and studied music for thirteen years, focusing on flute and singing, it is at this precise moment that she decided to resume her artistic journey. She spent a year at IACP (Paris) studying with Sarah Lazarus, who taught her the basics of scat and advised her to draw upon her technical knowledge and her flutist’s sensitivity to develop a vocabulary of her own.
Clotilde then immersed herself in jazz culture, notably through jazz composition and arrangement classes at EDIM (Cachan), where she also had the opportunity to attend master-classes with such accomplished masters as Steve Coleman, Dave Liebman, William Parker, Marc Copland and Marc Ducret.
Next she explored classical singing with tenor Peterson Cowan in order to perfect her vocal technique and attain a greater freedom in her singing. She met Martina A. Catella around this time. Martina A. Catella has run the Glotte-Trotters singing school for 25 years now, making the voice her speciality, and she asked Clotilde to join the teaching staff in 2007.
Thanks to Martina A. Catella, and several masters of ‘major forms of narrative song from across the world’, such as Sandra Rumolino and Constantin Lacatus, Clotilde was able to expand her research and studies to encompass : fado, tango, Berber songs, gypsy songs, Bulgarian chants, Inuits’ throat singing and harmonic singing. As an endless seeker of vocal art, she even traveled to Los Angeles to study with the world famous vocal power teacher Elisabeth Howard and is now one of the accredited teacher of her method.

All of them inspirations that enriched her world and which we find in her compositions and arrangements.
“She uses her voice like an instrument. She improvises, sings with a flute-like voice, chirrups like a bird and even growls. She likes to pull apart and to recompose, and that is why her music is very much of her time […]. She does what gives her pleasure, and she communicates this pleasure on stage.” Udo Raaf – Tonspion (DE)
Since then, Clotilde has continued to think of music as an invitation to travel, to embark on new adventures, and artistic and human encounters to inspire her further, and enrich her voice and her performance.
Clotilde has formed an adopted artistic family whose members are as eclectic as they are loyal, nurturing and supporting her every step of the way on her artistic path.

In 1998, Vadim Toropoff, founder of the record label Tzig’Art (which produces all Clotilde’s projects), brought her into the fold of the French gypsy/manouche scene. Thanks to him, she was able to soak up this musical culture, particularly through her encounters with the Ferré brothers, Angelo Debarre, Petro Ivanovitch and Petia Iourtchenko.
And it was in this milieu that she met guitarist Jean-Baptiste Laya (O’Djila, Christian Escoudé…) in 2000. He encouraged her to devote herself to music and singing, and even accompanied her during her first Paris concerts. Together, they immersed themselves in the music of the Balkans and the Paris “Yugoslavian” scene, as well as chanson française such as Claude Astier, Allain Leprest and Sanseverino.
This mélange of influences and friendships would lead to the creation of two multidisciplinary and transmedia shows for young people, in which Clotilde performed, danced and sang, Sur la route des tsiganes and Monsieur Jazz, and which toured festivals and prestigious venues across France from 2001 to 2012.

In 2004, Clotilde started singing jazz standards in Paris clubs every week, accompanied by guitarist Hugo Lippi. This collaboration resulted in the recording of her first album, Live au 7 Lézards, in 2006. This started out as a spontaneous project, fuelled by the risky verve of youth, comprising covers of pop and jazz songs, with a self-produced album recorded live as a duo. But it garnered a shower of praise, a “little marvel”, according to Thierry Quenum of Jazz Magazine, and it immediately made Clotilde Rullaud one of the hottest singers on the French jazz scene.
Her next album, In extremis, started to take shape in 2008, a turning point in Clotilde’s life as an artist, bringing her international acclaim.
In extremis was widely praised in France, while across the Channel The SundayTimes (UK) named it his 5th favorite jazz album of 2011. A string of rave reviews followed from magazines and radio shows across the world. In 2013, it has been ranked #5 in debut album category at the American NPR annual Jazz critics poll. She has been regularly touring in Europe, Asia, USA and Australia.

Since 2010, she has developed a fruitful collaboration with bandoneonist and composer Tristan Macé. Their first project was Le Diable à froid (2010), a trio with horn-player Albin Lebossé, revolving around the musical and literary styles of surrealism, Dadaism and tango. Next came Fleurs Invincibles – Invincible Flowers (2012), also involving Emmanuel Bex (piano/organ), Yann Cléry (flutes), Laurent Salzard (bass) and Gautier Garrigue (drums). This bilingual project is based on original compositions by Tristan Macé, and inspired by texts from American poets of the Beat Generation, and the poets of the French-speaking African countries of the 40s and 50s.

Ever eclectic, since 2013 she started collaborating on various projects. We can find her featuring next to Alain Jean-Marie on Nicolas Rageau’s album La complainte de la Tour Eiffel around the French singer Cora Vaucaire’s repertoire. She worked with Chekov, the band of musicians living in Shanghai, and the American free jazz drummer Percival Roman.

In 2014, Clotilde started a collaboration with the pianist Alexandre Saada. They create together the minimalist and rebellious duo Madeleine & Salomon. Their first album A woman’s journey mixes-up the reinterpretation of songs of American protest songstresses with free improvisations on dreamlike short films and dancer's "escapades".
Since its release in France, it is receiving great applauses from the media. It has been elected "Best album 2016" by the French National Radio France Musique and by Jazzmagazine and Citizenjazz. It has also been praised in the national newspapers Liberation, reviewed in the national magazine Causette, Politis and by CultureBox-FranceTV…
In the UK, they have been "Pick of the week" in the SundayTimes and interviewed and reviewed by Kevin Legendre in the UK Magazine Echoes. In Germany, they got a 4 stars review in FonoForum and an interview on the national German radio WDR4. Recently the album has been played on the American radios such as WMCB 107.9 and KUSP along side Kendrick Lamar or Kamazi Washington.
She also just finished a video-musical artwork called XXY - XX(wh)Y, in which she is both the author, the director, the editor, the co-composer and the leading vocalist.It stands at the crossroads between image, music and dance. This multi-disciplinary, cross-border (artistic collaboration between France, China and USA) video-musical object, investigates “the feminine” beyond genders, generations and borders.