Defining Matthieu Donarier’s musical identity, one could speak about a jazz musician constantly crossing all borders.
After a childhood surrounded by thousands of LPs from his parents, he first graduated from classical music studies, then dived at age of 19 into all forms of jazz and improvised playing. Since 1998 and the creation of his Trio with guitar player Manu Codjia and drummer Joe Quitzke, he has been developing many projects rooted in jazz but dealing with different aesthetics, from minimal chamber-music creations to electric and subtle rhythmic architectures, sometimes integrating traditional musics idioms, all of them built on sharp and precise composing works and allowing real freedom in the performing process. Beside his trio, which will soon celebrate 20 years of existence, long-distance partnerships with bass player Sébastien Boisseau, singer Poline Renou, saxophonist and composer Alban Darche or guitarist Santiago Quintans have led to numerous musical adventures (Unit, Wood, Kindergarten, Adieu mes très belles, Gros Cube & Orphicube, Longboard, Origami, TipTrick, Sun Dome, Fog Dog) fromduets to large ensembles.
Beside ADIEU MES TRES BELLES, his actual projets as a leader and co-leader are : MATTHIEU DONARIER TRIO - with Manu Codjia (gt) & Joe Quitzke (dr) , WOOD- duet with Sébastien Boisseau (b), SUN DOME - duet with Santiago Quintans (el g), FOG DOG - sound & light quartet with Santiago Quintans, Toma Gouband (drums) and SamMary (light installations),
LE BESTIAIRE DE RUSSELL TWANG - modular ensemble with Eve Risser (p), Karsten Hochapfel (cello), Toma Gouband (dr), Gilles Coronado (el g), Samuel Blaser (tb), Antonin-Tri Hoang (as, cl) and Christophe Lavergne (dr).
With a passion for litterature and drawing, Matthieu Donarier develops a music which reinvents itself endlessly, where sound is a material to be sculpted, a deeply rythmical structure where the frontiers of improvisation and composition tend to fade away.