Clotilde Rullaud

With music proving to be an insufficient medium for her fertile imagination, Clotilde continued her reflections on womanhood by presenting in 2021 XXY, an interdisciplinary play performed by five musicians and five dancers, accompanied with footage of her music and body in motion artmovie XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ] (2018). Grégory Dargent was involved as composer and Mehdi Diouri and Céline Tringali as choreographers.

In 2019, Clotilde took part in the Badara festival in Burkina-Faso, her first encounter with this country where she established multiple artistic collaborations. Each stay gave rise to new creations: the French-Burkinese quintet Sankolé, created in January 2020, the Burkinese-Swiss-French quartet KanFiguè, created in January 2021, and the French-Burkinese quartet Djafolo.

In 2017, she moved to New York City to pursue a collaboration with the American pianist Chris McCarthy, which led to Pieces of a Song, a repertoire of dark and beautiful pieces based on the writings of Beat poet Diane di Prima.

In 2014, she started collaborating with the pianist Alexandre Saada. Together, they founded the group Madeleine & Salomon, a minimalist and delicate duo tackling a humanist and rebellious repertoire. Their first album, A Woman’s Journey, is a homage to American female protest singers.

Next came Tristan Macé's jazz opera Etrangement Bleu (2011). Their most recent project is Fleurs Invincibles – Invincible Flowers (2012), also involving Emmanuel Bex (piano/organ), Yann Cléry (flutes), Laurent Salzard (bass) and Gautier Garrigue (drums). This bilingual project is based on original compositions by Tristan Macé, and inspired by texts from American poets of the Beat Generation, and black French poets of the 40s and 50s.

Since 2010, Clotilde has developed a collaboration with bandonéonist and composer Tristan Macé. Their first project was Le Diable à froid (2010), a trio with horn-player Albin Lebossé, revolving around the musical and literary styles of surrealism, Dadaism and tango.

March 2008 saw the beginning of a new project called In Extremis, a bass-less quartet with Olivier Hutman (piano), Dano Haider (seven-string guitar) and Antoine Paganotti (drums). Their hybrid music takes the audience to a place where the greatest jazz standards rub shoulders with world music, original compositions and pop songs.

With a repertoire spanning jazz, free improvisation and folk music, her career as a musician has led her to perform in France, Germany, Australia, Burkina Faso, China, South Korea, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Since 2007, Clotilde has taught at Martina A. Catella's school, Les Glotte-Trotters, in Paris. She also runs workshops for the festival Les Suds in Arles and for the Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie (ADEM) in Geneva.

In 2004, she started working with the guitar player, Hugo Lippi, with whom she recorded her first album, Live au 7 Lézards, three years later.

In 2002 and 2003, she conceived two live shows inspired by her travel diaries: Sur la route des Tziganes and Monsieur Jazz, both multidisciplinary pieces for seven performers, in which Clotilde sang and danced, as well as narrated.

Clotilde (Rullaud) ([kloːtildəʼ ʁʏːlɔ]; born March 1, 1978, in Reims) is an artistic director, singer, vocalist, flutist, composer, filmmaker, producer and vocal coach.