| Yannick RieuComposer and tenor saxophonist Yannick Rieu is one of the finest musicians – in any genre of music - to have emerged from Québec, and one who’s also enjoyed an international career for many years, particularly in France.
Yannick was raised in the Gaspé and Saguenay regions (Québec). After studying at Le Conservatoire de Rennes (Britanny), then in Chicoutimi and Montreal, he began his jazz career in 1980. As early as 1988, Down Beat, the American bible of jazz, ranked him amongst the 20 most promising sax players in the world alongside Branford Marsalis, Joe Lovano and Courtney Pine. Since then, he’s been collecting rave reviews in jazz publications in the U.S., France and Canada for his recordings and his live performances.
Yannick Rieu has toured extensively Québec and the rest of Canada, as well as France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Brasil. He frequently travels to Paris, the jazz capital of Europe. A great admirer of the legendary sax players who marked the history of jazz over the last half-century, including Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Wayne Shorter and Steve Lacy, Yannick absorbed their influences to forge his own style, skillfully mastered and highly personal. Rieu’s expression is utterly free of clichés and his phrasing is as much innovative and captivating, revealing the artist’s strong understanding and competence within the jazz idiom.
He has played with Paul Bley, Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Jon Hendricks and Bill Carrothers. Yannick Rieu received the 2006 “Oscar Peterson” prize for his contribution to Canadian jazz. So far, Rieu collected three Félix Awards (ADISQ) for Jazz Album of the Year: What Is the Colour of Love, Little Zab, and “I” Is Memory.
In 2007 Rieu completed his eight disc St-Gervais released by Justin Time.
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