Bernard Vitet, born on May 26, 1934 in Paris, is a French trumpetist and composer, co-founder of the first free jazz

Free jazz

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 band in France (1964) together with François Tusques, Michel Portal

Michel Portal

Michel Portal is a composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.Portal studied clarinet at the Conservatoire de Paris...

 Unit (1972) and Un Drame Musical Instantané

Un Drame Musical Instantané

Un Drame Musical Instantané, since its creation in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé, has decided to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in themselves, or their live shows which they try to renew every time...

 with Jean-Jacques Birgé

Jean-Jacques Birgé

Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer , film director , multimedia author , sound designer Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer (co-founder of Un Drame Musical Instantané which with he records...

 and Francis Gorgé in 1976.

He belongs to the first meeting between jazz and contemporary music with Bernard Parmegiani

Bernard Parmegiani

Bernard Parmegiani is a composer best known for his electronic or acousmatic music.-Biography:Between 1957 and 1961 he studied mime with Jacques Lecoq, a period he later regarded as important to his work as a composer...

 and Jean-Louis Chautemps. In the 60's, he accompanies singers Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...

, Barbara

Barbara

-People:* Barbara , people with the given name Barbara* Etienne Barbara , Maltese soccer player* Barbara , stage name of French singer Monique Andrée Serf-Places:* Barbara , ancient region in the Horn of Africa...

, Yves Montand

Yves Montand

-Early life:Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy, the son of poor peasants Giuseppina and Giovanni Livi, a broommaker. Montand's mother was a devout Catholic, while his father held strong Communist beliefs. Because of the Fascist regime in Italy, Montand's family left for France in...

, Claude François

Claude François

Claude François was a French pop singer, songwriter and dancer. He wrote "Comme d'habitude," the original version of "My Way."-Early life:...

, Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...

, Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....

, Colette Magny, Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1939 in Morlaix in the Brittany region of France, is a singer of avant-garde music. During the course of her career she has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry and world rhythms...

. He plays with famous jazz musicians such as Lester Young

Lester Young

Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums....

, Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...

, Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

, Don Cherry

Don Cherry (jazz)

Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...

, Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

, the Art Ensemble of Chicago

Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s. The group continues to tour and record through 2006, despite the deaths of two of the founding members....

, Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....

, Gato Barbieri

Gato Barbieri

Leandro Barbieri , better known as Gato Barbieri , is an Argentinean jazz tenor saxophonist and composer who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and from his latin jazz recordings in the 1970s.-Biography:Born to a family of musicians, Barbieri began playing music...

, Jean-Luc Ponty

Jean-Luc Ponty

Jean-Luc Ponty is a French virtuoso violinist and jazz composer.- Early years:Ponty was born into a family of classical musicians on 29 September 1942 in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, his mother taught piano...

, Martial Solal

Martial Solal

Martial Solal is a French jazz pianist and composer, who is probably most widely known for the music he wrote for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film À bout de souffle .-Biography:...

... In his early years he was lucky enough to perform with Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

, Gus Viseur

Gus Viseur

Gus Viseur, born Gustave-Joseph Viseur was a Belgian/French button accordionist.Gus Viseur was a virtuoso in the musette genre, during the swing era in the 1930s. He is the only jazz accordionist who is a member of the famous Hot Club de France, conducted by Charles Delaunay.-Biography:Gus Viseur...

, Eric Dolphy

Eric Dolphy

Eric Allan Dolphy was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist. On a few occasions he also played the clarinet and baritone saxophone. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s...

, Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...

...

Under his own name he records Surprise-partie avec Bernard Vitet (on trombone!), La Guêpe on texts by Francis Ponge

Francis Ponge

Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...

, Mehr Licht!, and about 200 other records with those mentioned above plus Jean-Claude Fohrenbach, Georges Arvanitas

Georges Arvanitas

Georges Arvanitas was a jazz pianist and organist.- Life and career :He began life as a child of Greek immigrants from Constantinople. At the age of four he began studying piano and initially trained as a classical. However he switched to jazz some time in his teens and would be known for jazz in...

, Sunny Murray

Sunny Murray

James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray is one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming.-Biography:...

, Michel Pascal, Alan Silva

Alan Silva

Alan Silva is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player.-Biography:...

, Alexander von Schlippenbach

Alexander von Schlippenbach

Alexander von Schlippenbach is a German jazz pianist and composer.-Biography:...

, Hubert Rostaing

Hubert Rostaing

Hubert Rostaing was a jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist. He also did film composition and classical music....

, Alix Combelle

Alix Combelle

Alix Combelle was a French swing jazz tenor saxophonist, clarinetist and bandleader, born in and performing in Paris for most of his life. He was well known on the Continental Jazz scene of Europe, active mostly in the 1930s and 1940s...

, Ivan Jullien, Christian Chevalier, Jef Gilson, Jack Diéval, Jac Berrocal

Jac Berrocal

Jacques "Jac" Berrocal is a French trumpeter, singer and composer. He has been active since the 1970s in the independent and avant-garde music scene, and has released many albums. He also founded and performed in the group Catalogue, and has collaborated with Ron Anderson...

, Hélène Sage... and 17 albums with Un drame musical instantané. In 1995, he co-signs the songs of Carton with Birgé, with whom he collaborates on music for films, exhibitions, CD-Roms...

Bernard Vitet invents instruments such as a reed trumpet, a multiphonic French horn, a variable tension double-bass, the dragoon which is a giant balafon with frying pans and flower pots keyboard, a clever system of modal clocks, and astonishing musical objects for Georges Aperghis

Georges Aperghis

Georges Aperghis is a Greek composer working primarily in the field of experimental music theater but has also composed a large amount of non-programmatic chamber music...

, Tamia, Françoise Achard... Besides trumpet he sings, plays flugelhorn

Flugelhorn

The flugelhorn is a brass instrument resembling a trumpet but with a wider, conical bore. Some consider it to be a member of the saxhorn family developed by Adolphe Sax ; however, other historians assert that it derives from the valve bugle designed by Michael Saurle , Munich 1832 , thus...

, piano and violin.

He composes theatre music for Jean-Marie Serrault... and for films (Les coeurs verts by Édouard Luntz, L'ombre de la pomme by Robert Lapoujade with Jean-Louis Chautemps, Bof by Claude Faraldo in collaboration with Jean Guérin, Le bourreau by Jean-Denis Bonan...).

From 1976 to 2008, he devotes himself essentially to Un Drame Musical Instantané with Jean-Jacques Birgé.

Sources

• Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli, Free Jazz Black Power, Ed. Champ Libre, coll.10-18, 1971, p. 418-419
• Philippe Carles, André Clergeat and Jean-Louis Comolli, Dictionnaire du jazz, Ed. Robert Laffont, Coll. Bouquins, Paris, 1994, p. 1220-1221.

External links

• Site of Un drame musical instantané
• Mémoires d'un dilettante in Les Allumés du Jazz n°5, 2001