Born to a French father and a Dominican mother in Fontainebleau, Cyrille-Aimée grew up in the small town of Samois sur Seine, home of the late Django Reinhardt. Samois hosts an annual Django Reinhardt Festival, to which gypsies from every corner of Europe travel with caravans each summer to pay tribute to the legend of gypsy jazz.
Cyrille-Aimee became involved with the gypsies at a young age, and quickly adopted them as her second family. Even though Cyrille already displayed natural abilities for music and dance, strongly influenced by her Latin mother, her first encounter with jazz came from her experiences with the gypsies. Singing along with Django’s and Stephane Grapelli’s guitar solos, she learned them all by heart at only fifteen years old, however Cyrille’s biggest influence came from Ella Fitzgerald, with her driving swing and sensuous joy of life.
In 2005 Cyrille-Aimee moved to the United States to study jazz in the conservatory at Purchase College under the intense instruction of such teachers as Javon Jackson, Jimmy Greene, John Faddis, Ray Vega amongst many others.
In 2007 Cyrille took home the first prize of the Montreux Jazz Vocal Competition. She was also the Public Prize winner. During the 2008 Summer season Cyrille went on a three-month, international tour with the well-known French band Caravan Palace. She played over forty shows throughout the tour (sometimes two shows a day) for crowds of up to 10,000 people.
At 25 years old Cyrille-Aimee has amassed an impressive list of performances, including, but not limited to; An appearance at the Django Reinhardt festival with guitarists Romane and David Reinhardt, performances with Latin musicians such as pianist Jorge Tavera, Tania Maria’s percussionist Guarionex Aquino, and singers Maridalia Hernandez, Gilberto Santa Rosa and Danny Rivera, and fronting Caravan Palace for the Summer of 2008.
Currently Cyrille sings in such bands as Pacha Massive, The Shmack Attack, Joe Ferry and the Big Ska Band, the trip-hop band MasRhon, and other and has just recorded a cd with her own project: Cyrille-Aimee and the Surreal Band, which you can find on iTunes. She can be found performing regularly in New York City with musicians Joel Frahm, Doug Weiss Harvey S and Spike Wilner, amongst others.
This summer, she was invited to perform in Sao Paolo and Franca in Brazil, with Diego Figuereido and Robertinho Sliva. A new guitar and voice duo record with Diego is on its way!… Read more about Cyrille Aimée on her blog.
