Laurent de Wilde

Trackimage Playbut Trackname Playbut Trackname
If I Could 04:58 Tools
The Present 00:00 Tools
Misterioso 00:00 Tools
Shuffle Boil 00:00 Tools
Invitation 00:00 Tools
Round Midnight 00:00 Tools
Out of This World 00:00 Tools
Jungle Hard Bop 00:00 Tools
Battle in a Box 00:00 Tools
Don't Axe Me 00:00 Tools
Move On 00:00 Tools
Time for Change 00:00 Tools
Tune for T. 00:00 Tools
Over the Clouds 00:00 Tools
Fe Fe Naa Efe 00:00 Tools
Fleurette Africaine 00:00 Tools
Uno 00:00 Tools
Prelude to a Kiss 00:00 Tools
Edward K. 00:00 Tools
One for Ernie 00:00 Tools
Fathers 00:00 Tools
House of Jade 00:00 Tools
Sleep Well, My Friend 00:00 Tools
Live & Dyrek 00:00 Tools
Relaxin' at Camarillo 00:00 Tools
Le bon médicament 04:58 Tools
Edward K 00:00 Tools
Totem 00:00 Tools
Late Late Blues 00:00 Tools
Versus 14 00:00 Tools
So long Barney 00:00 Tools
Some Kinda Blues 00:00 Tools
Spintronix 00:00 Tools
Irafrica 00:00 Tools
Thelonious 00:00 Tools
Summertime 00:00 Tools
Mr Natural 00:00 Tools
Spoon-a-rhythm 00:00 Tools
The Club 00:00 Tools
Up and Down 00:00 Tools
'Round Midnight 00:00 Tools
french elections 00:00 Tools
New Nuclear Killer 00:00 Tools
The prisoner 00:00 Tools
No Straight 00:00 Tools
Monk's Mood 03:20 Tools
Fly n'Lips 00:00 Tools
Snippets 00:00 Tools
Meet My Old Friend 00:00 Tools
Moanin 00:00 Tools
big up 00:00 Tools
Flavvy Flav 05:11 Tools
Pannonica 00:00 Tools
Out Blues 00:00 Tools
All dues 00:00 Tools
Four In One 00:00 Tools
Blues in the Background 03:20 Tools
Lo B 00:00 Tools
Quiet - Not Quite 00:00 Tools
Moanin' 00:00 Tools
Monk's Mix 00:00 Tools
Reflections 00:00 Tools
Monkadelik 00:00 Tools
Coming on the Hudson 00:00 Tools
Over the Clouds - Radio Edit 00:00 Tools
Yesterdays 00:00 Tools
Locomotive 00:00 Tools
Gallop's Gallop 00:00 Tools
Friday the 13th 00:00 Tools
Fe Fe Naa Efe (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn, Jerôme Regard, Laurent Robin) 00:00 Tools
Besame Mucho 00:00 Tools
Prelude to a Kiss (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
Druminium 00:00 Tools
Moronoxy 00:00 Tools
The prisoner - Record Store 00:00 Tools
You've Changed 00:00 Tools
Over the Clouds (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
Late Bloomer 00:00 Tools
Lost 00:00 Tools
Dakar at Dark 00:00 Tools
Quiet- Not Quite 00:00 Tools
The 5th Company 00:00 Tools
Pick a Clic 00:00 Tools
Goodbye To 00:00 Tools
Take a Break 00:00 Tools
Le bon médicament (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are 00:00 Tools
Over the Clouds (radio edit) 03:19 Tools
Irafrica (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
What Is This Thing Called Love 00:00 Tools
Edward K (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
Everytime We Say Goodbye 00:00 Tools
Sorry George 00:00 Tools
Some Kinda Blues (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
Assaulted peanuts 00:00 Tools
New Nuclear Killer (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) 00:00 Tools
How Deep Is The Ocean 00:00 Tools
Odd and blue 00:00 Tools
Twilight 00:00 Tools
Ignatz's brick 00:00 Tools
Fly n'Lips - Radio Edit 00:00 Tools
Goodbye 00:00 Tools
Malia - If I Could 00:00 Tools
Druminium - Radio Edit 00:00 Tools
Oral Loops 00:00 Tools
The Pleasure Is Mine 00:00 Tools
We'll Be Together Again 00:00 Tools
Secret Plan 00:00 Tools
Brooding 00:00 Tools
Off The Boat 00:00 Tools
Meet My Old Friend - Radio Edit 00:00 Tools
Brooklyn Brazil 00:00 Tools
Glitch 00:00 Tools
El gaucho 00:00 Tools
Vocals By Malia - If I Could 00:00 Tools
You Don't Know What Love Is 00:00 Tools
Edward K. (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
If I Could (Featuring Malia) 00:00 Tools
Spare Changes 00:00 Tools
Io B 00:00 Tools
You Go To My Head 00:00 Tools
Eternal Tourist 00:00 Tools
Off Minor 00:00 Tools
Armaggedon 00:00 Tools
Piano for Ever 00:00 Tools
Wish List 00:00 Tools
Five Is Company 00:00 Tools
Ultimate Tea Party 00:00 Tools
Peace and the Hump 00:00 Tools
Old devil moon 00:00 Tools
Round Midnight (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
If I Could (Vocals By Malia) 00:00 Tools
For All We Now 00:00 Tools
Spoon-a-Rhythm (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
Relaxin' At Camarillo (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
Le Bon Medicament 00:00 Tools
Invitation (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
What Is This Thing Called Love ? 00:00 Tools
Over the Clouds (feat. Ira Coleman, Clarence Penn) [Radio Edit] 00:00 Tools
If I Could (feat. Malia) 00:00 Tools
Fleurette africaine (feat. Dion Parson) 00:00 Tools
Fathers (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
Totem (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
The Club (feat. Dion Parson) 00:00 Tools
Reflections In D 00:00 Tools
Nawfel - Tassel & Naturel - HH 00:00 Tools
Walk On The Wild Side 00:00 Tools
Eau de mouche n°5 00:00 Tools
The Best Is Yet To Come 00:00 Tools
Intro 00:00 Tools
Rapture 00:00 Tools
Olde Devil Moon 00:00 Tools
Jazz Me I'm Infamous 00:00 Tools
01 - Shuffle Boil 00:00 Tools
Fe Fe Naa Efe (feat. Jerôme Regard & Laurent Robin) 00:00 Tools
Yack Attack 00:00 Tools
Hiphex Blues 00:00 Tools
The prisoner (Record Store) 00:00 Tools
So Long Barney (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
Tune for T. (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
Flavvy 00:00 Tools
To Break The Ice 00:00 Tools
The Man and the Wood 00:00 Tools
01 - French Elections 00:00 Tools
Manu Katche - Tassel & Naturel - D-Miles 00:00 Tools
Mr naturel 00:00 Tools
03 - The Present 00:00 Tools
Meet My Old Friend (Radio Edit) 00:00 Tools
Live Trabendo Paris Track No 1 00:00 Tools
Good Cop Bad Cop 00:00 Tools
B Flat Seven 00:00 Tools
Born To Be Blue 00:00 Tools
Live Dyrek (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
07 - Move On 00:00 Tools
Flavvy Flav feat. Flavio Boltro 00:00 Tools
Ora I Loops 00:00 Tools
Sleep Well, My Friends 00:00 Tools
Brooklyn, Brazil 00:00 Tools
The 5th Company (L'Oeuf Raide Remix) 00:00 Tools
Fly n'Lips (Radio Edit) 00:00 Tools
Druminium (Radio Edit) 00:00 Tools
02 - Flavvy Flav 00:00 Tools
Geek No Geek 00:00 Tools
09 - Blues In The Background 00:00 Tools
Flavvy Flav - De Wilde, Laurent & Flavio Boltro 00:00 Tools
If I could feat. Malia 00:00 Tools
We'll be together again(Fischer) 00:00 Tools
How Deep Is the Ocean? 00:00 Tools
Live Trabendo Paris Track No 3 00:00 Tools
Big Up - De Wilde, Laurent & Orlando Maraca Valle 00:00 Tools
Live Trabendo Paris Track No 2 00:00 Tools
Live Trabendo Paris Track No 4 00:00 Tools
Live Trabendo Paris Track No 6 00:00 Tools
For You Mom And Dad 00:00 Tools
Over The Clouds [Radio Edit] 00:00 Tools
04 - If I Could 00:00 Tools
05 - Out Of This World 00:00 Tools
07 - Uno 00:00 Tools
Big Up feat. Orlando Maraca Valle 00:00 Tools
Outro 00:00 Tools
Live Trabendo Paris Track No 5 00:00 Tools
03-moanin 00:00 Tools
I Love Piano for Ever 00:00 Tools
Fleurette Africane 00:00 Tools
08 - All Dues 00:00 Tools
Live & Dyrek (feat. Ira Coleman, Dion Parson, Bobby Thomas Jr.) 00:00 Tools
08 - Jungle Hard Bop 00:00 Tools
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Laurent De Wilde, the Mid-Atlantic piano player of the year, is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. This school and a few others like it are called Les Grandes Ecoles and they are comparable to the Ivy League. They produce the elite in this country. And so it seemed appropriate to ask De Wilde: "What's a nice guy like you doing in a métier like this?" He replied with a very American have-a-nice-day croon: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." The time had been late. De Wilde did not decide to take jazz seriously until the age of 23 (he's 34 now). It had gone down like this. His father was an official in the French Embassy in Washington, Laurent was born there. The family went back and forth. He has two passports. Educated in France, he was too busy climbing the educational system's elite ladder to worry about what would come next. In the Grandes Ecoles, education becomes a sort of end in itself. He used to go on vacation with a Greek dictionary in his backpack. He had little time for the piano throughout high and prep schools. The entrance exam for the Ecole Normale is tough. Once accepted, however, he found he could "coast. Once you're in, you're cool. You're paid. They pay you to go to school. Isn't that hip? I could play music all day long." The school sends students abroad for a year and when he asked to go to New York they said "Why not?" Working in the consulate's cultural service by day, jazz was "thrown in my face" at night. He returned to graduate but straight life in Paris turned him off. He switched majors, you might say, as well as cities. Back in New York, after two years on scholarship at Long Island University, he learned the repertoire in a big-time sink-or-swim situation as part of Ted Curson's rhythm section for the well frequented after-hour jam sessions in the Blue Note. He learned how to relate to in-crowd jazzmen like Greg Osby, Ralph Moore, Ira Coleman and Billy Hart. And, with Patricia, a French woman he met in New York who would soon become his wife, he learned about life in Hell's Kitchen. They found a huge loft where he could make music all night. But it turned out that the gas bill had not been paid for 15 years and Con Ed said come up with $21,000 or the heat will be cut. It was mid-January. In Paris they cannot legally throw you out to freeze in the winter but there are no such niceties in New York. He felt like he was negotiating a Third World country's debt. They reached an agreement. But then the fire department found violations and the elevator broke down. And Patricia was pregnant. A lucky break. A producer who was trying to close a French television deal with an American company spoke no English and said he'd "pay anything" for an interpretor. The consulate hooked him up with the normalien in New York, who helped him put his variety show together. He became its musical director and was happy to be raising a child in Paris rather than Manhattan. Another lucky break. Although he had decided to follow a different lifestyle, he missed intellectual pusuits like literature and philosophy which had attracted him to the Ecole Normal Supérieure in the first place. So when he met a French editor in New York who said to him "why don't you write a book about Thelonious Monk.?" De Wilde replied: "Right-on, Daddy-o." He wrote it in Paris "in bursts" (in French, for Gallimard). He tried to write "well. Better than journalism." He knows about journalism. His interviews with major names appear regularly in Jazz Magazine. Monk, he says, is like "a farmer in cattle land. Herds of cattle stampede around his little garden mooing and kicking up a lot of dust, but he just goes on cultivating his tomatoes. He's a wonderful example of obstinacy. The lesson is be obstinate in your search for excellence." De Wilde can identify with obstinance. He obtained a deferral from the French military draft by "staring at my shoes for three days" during the test period: "It's hard to do. You try it. My best friend from the third grade happened to be in the same group as me. We hadn't seen each other since. He kept looking at me. But I was supposed to be crazy, right? So I just kept staring at my shoes and I wouldn't talk to him." That's one definition of how to separate the normaliens from the hipsters. That said, culturally speaking, De Wilde has been anything but obstinate. He's your classic Mid-Atlantic man. Vacillating back and forth. Even though he is the first artist to be signed by Sony France's new jazz production operation and his album "The Back Burner" has just been released, he feels himself losing his musical edge in Paris and is once more searching for a key to New York. Being a Mid-Atlantic man can be schizophrenic. He speaks in a remarkably aleatoric Franglais: "In America, the bottom line is 'make it work.' The nice thing about France is that there is no bottom line. Or rather the bottom line is making sense not money. We have great brains in France, but we don't make things work. We don't care if it works or not. If it looks nice on paper or in theory then it already works. "But in the States it's 'don't talk about it, do it. And fast.' In music it's 'don't talk about it, play it.' That sort of thing doesn't exist in France. I get exasperated when French musicians come late to a rehearsal and they didn't bring the flute or whatever they were supposed to bring. You know the way it goes: 'Come on, I have this great wine you should check out."' Writing words and making music — solitary vs. communal endeavor, verbal vs. abstract communication — leads to another sort of schizophrenia: "In journalism you have to hit the subject on the head. There are all these pages in the paper and every square inch has to be interesting. The competition to attract the reader's attention at all costs is incredible. With jazz, the form has time to unravel. You can sneak up on it. Any jazzman who tries to attract attention at all costs is lost to the cause. But each occupation involves another way to get there. Maybe that's a definition of art in general. Another way to get there." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.