Born in the Ivory Coast to teachers, Samy Thiébault received his musical education at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux before entering the prestigious Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris to study jazz (class of 2008).
Parallel to his music studies, he obtained a Master’s degree in philosophy, with high honors, from the Sorbonne (2001).
The album “Blues For Nel” came out in 2004, followed by “Gaya Scienza” in 2007, and “Upanishad Experiences” in 2010, which was the first project produced by the label he created and now directs, Gaya Music Production.
The album “Clear Fire” was released in 2013. It was at this time that Samy began collaborating on dance, theatre, and cinema projects. He has made music for several films, including “Les Autres sois” (2022), Nadir Moknèche’s film “L’Air de la mer” (2023), and Édouard Tissot’s “En son absence” (2014). In 2013, he became a teacher of jazz and saxophone at the music conservatory of Choisy-le-Roi.
The 2015 release of the album “Feast of Friends” (an homage to the Doors) was a major turning point in Samy’s career, leading as it did to the crucial meeting of Samy and celebrated trumpeter Avishai Cohen. The two collaborated on Samy’s 2016 album “Rebirth.”
The year 2018 saw the release of “Caribbean Stories,” an album built like a subjective journey through the Caribbean. The saxophonist had fallen in love with the culture of the islands in 2014 during a tour in Venezuela. In her preface to the album, former French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira wrote that “Samy Thiébault appears to have understood the plasticity of this music. It’s varied. It’s rarely shrill; it’s attentive to where it comes from and it cares for its cultural roots, though not nearly as much as it bears witness to the jolts and blows that brought it to life, to the yawning abyss it comes from, and to the edge of the abyss it continues to frequent, against its will. To the chaos that gave it substance. And to a rumbling serenity.”
In September 2019, Samy Thiébault realized a dream he’d nurtured for over ten years: to write a suite for symphonic orchestra and jazz quintet that would unite 20th-century French music, African-African jazz spirituals from the 1960s, and classical Indian music. Thanks to a powerful connection with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne, conductor Aurélien Azan Zielenski, and sound engineer Philippe Teissier Du Cros – all under the leadership of producer Sébastien Vidal, with whom Samy has worked on his past several albums – the album “Symphonic Tales” was recorded in wonderfully favorable conditions. The album was the start of a new adventure for Samy and his group.
The year 2021 saw the release of “Awé!”, an ambitious album recorded in Miami, Cuba, France, and Sao Polo, containing rich and varied influences. The album was also the final part of Samy’s triptych on Creolization. The saxophonist invited the best musicians of the Cuban diaspora to play on the album: Dafnis Prieto (drummer, composer, winner of the Thelonious Monk Competition, Grammy Award 2019), pianist Manuel Valera, Brian Lynch on trumpet (ex-Jazz Messengers, Grammy Award 2020), and Yunior Terry on double bass. Pianist Éric Legnini, a close friend of the saxophonist and one of the most talented pianists in Europe in addition to being a seasoned producer. A string orchestra and chamber orchestra joined the core group on the record.
Samy is currently working on his next album, “In Waves,” with a much more intimate, poetic, and socially engaged content than ever before. Not only will he play with his quartet, but he’ll use sequencers and electronic music elements, whose common gravitational pull will be the Ocean...
The saxophonist has played with his group on every continent and at the major European and world festivals and venues (Olympia, Marciac, Nice, Sète, Marseille, Moscow, Montreal, Medellín, Hong Kong, New York, and more).
His playing, “Coltranian in the best sense of the word” (Nouvel Obs), “with its dance-like discourse somewhere between trance and spiritual message” (Libération), places him among the “most important and emblematic musicians of his generation” (France Inter), making him “one of France’s country's greatest jazzmen” (JazzNews).
In addition to his numerous critical distinctions (the press is also unanimous: qualified as Indispensable in JazzNews, 4 stars in Jazzmag, a “Coup de Coeur” for France Musique, best album two years in a row for TSF), he has twice made the front page of JazzNews and appeared on the cover of Télérama in 2022. He was nominated in the Best Album category at the 2019 Victoires du Jazz awards, as well as Best Musician of the Year as part of the 2022 Django Reinhardt Prize. Samy won the 2023 Sacem/France Musique prize for best film score for his work on Nadir Moknèche’s feature film, “L’air de la mer rend libre” (You Promised Me the Sea).
