Wednesday 24 November 2021, at 8.30 pm Opéra de Monte-Carlo - Salle Garnier
Jamie Cullum
When his latest album Taller was released, Jamie Cullum confided: "My music is basically a jazz fan's!" Quite. At the age of 20, full of youthful ardour, he was already ruffling feathers in his world, shaking up a choice selection of gems from the "Great American Song Book" and giving them a decidedly "pop" makeover that some took for irreverence. Now 40, with a handful of gold records and Grammy Awards in his pocket, Jamie Cullum is now firmly a part of the jazz family and no one would question his legitimacy. With the same enthusiasm, but with a maturity that can be heard in his phrasing and his increasingly established compositional skills, Jamie Cullum continues to express his uninhibited vision of a tradition anchored in jazz, but decidedly open to the rhythms and sounds of more contemporary popular music.
Five years after the release of his first album, he contributed to the soundtrack of the movie Bridget Jones The Age of Reason, covering the song "Everlasting Love". Then came the awards and a new opportunity in 2008, that saw him compose the ballad Gran Torino, specially for the Clint Eastwood film of the same name. The same year, he appeared on the album Music Hole by Camille. He occasionally performs the song "Ta Douleur" from that very album on stage.
Since 2010, he has presented a weekly jazz program on BBC Radio 2 for which he has received numerous awards. With jazz as a starting point, the show explores the world of hip-hop, electronic music and beyond, with various tracks, interviews and live sessions.
