Benjamin Bondonneau

Born on March 14th 1975 in Sarlat (24). Double activity of painting artist and musician. Teaches Plastic Arts and musical improvisation to various audiences : amateurs, professionals, schools, music schools, conservatories. Start the clarinet at the age of 9 and follows a classical training for about ten years (many concerts and auditions, plays among several regional orchestras : orchestre philharmonique de Sarlat, 1st clarinet in l'orchestre symphonique du Périgord Noir, various harmonies, soloist in a string septet...). First contact with free improvisation in 1990 with Georges Petit (saxophone and composition) and André-Marc Delcour (flutes) for a series of concerts in Ireland arund the fables of La Fontaine. Then trains among many rock, then jazz and free-jazz formations, and in parallel starts studies at l'école des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (graduates the DNAP in 1996 then the DNSEP in 1998). Has for several years now exclusively turned towards free improvisation (work with Michel Doneda, Lê Quan Ninh, Fabrice & Laurent Charles, David Chiesa, Daunik Lazro, Beñat Achiary...)

Recently appeared in the landscape of improvisation, with notably a solo record unanimously acclaimed both by the critics ("this record stands as references for the instrument - the clarinet - as well as its use and in some ways its capacitation or, if necessary, its rehabilitation" Philippe Renaud - Improjazz) and the musicians (Lazro had got it right in the first place) : the public is now about to discover him after years working on the sound matter of his instrument.