The Leaf Label: COLLEEN

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BIOGRAPHY

Cécile Schott (San Sebastian, Spain)

Colleen is a French musician working within a minimalist and melodic aesthetic using acoustic instruments and modern technologies.

She has released three albums on The Leaf Label, and also released a live recording in the Mort Aux Vaches series on Staalplaat in 2006, and an EP made entirely with music boxes (the result of a commission by national French radio station France Culture) in October of that year. In 2007 she also completed her first dance score for Franco-Swiss choreographer and dancer Perrine Valli.

While her first album was made up entirely of acoustic samples taken from an eclectic record collection, her second album saw her explore a music full of magical details - instrumentals filled with warmth, melody and soul, phasing in and out, on the verge of collapse - with Colleen playing all the instruments herself (cello, classical guitar, ukulele, music boxes, windchimes, and a rare 19th century glass harmonicon).

Her most recent album, Les Ondes Silencieuses, is a highly personal tribute to the sounds of bygone instruments and their resonance: the deep sounds of the viola da gamba – the 7-string ancestor of the cello – are left to shine out on their own, while other tracks explore the spinet (a small harpsichord), clarinet, classical guitar and crystal glasses.

Colleen’s live shows, with their wide array of acoustic instruments, reflect her deep love of acoustic sounds, and the occasional use of looping and delay pedals brings her live music closer to the layered feel of her albums.

She has performed live all over Europe, the US, Brazil, Singapore and Japan, giving more than 150 shows in sometimes prestigious venues including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Union Chapel and ICA in London, various churches in the UK, the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in Glasgow, Dublin’s Spiegeltent, the Brussels planetarium, the Sé cathedral of Lisbon, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre and New York’s Society for Ethical Culture, as well as some world-reknowned festivals such as The Wire’s Adventures in Music Festival in Chicago, Transmediale in Berlin, Mutek in Canada, Présences Electronique in Paris, and many more.

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