Jazz Academy Names Pianist Grégory Privat as Best Musician of the Year

The 39-year-old artist, Grégory Privat, has been recognized as the fourth West Indian artist to receive the esteemed Django-Reinhardt prize. This honor has been awarded in the past to organist Eddy Louiss, pianist Alain Jean-Marie, and singer Cécile McLorin Salvant in its 71 editions. Privat, a pianist-composer-singer was handed the 2023 Django-Reinhardt prize, a highly esteemed distinction from the Jazz Academy, in a ceremony that took place on Monday evening in Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine.

Prior recipients from the West Indies include Eddy Louiss, who received the award in 1964, Alain Jean-Marie in 1979, and Cécile McLorin Salvant in 2017. Now, Privat joins the ranks as the fourth artist of West Indian heritage to be recognized amongst the 71 laureates. He expressed his surprise and gratitude upon receiving the award, stating, “I didn’t expect to receive an award of this magnitude. When you decide to make music, it’s not to receive awards, and I’m very, very moved and honored.” Privat released his work Phoenix last year, a record that blends jazz with pop and Creole music.

The Django-Reinhardt prize holds significant prestige and is awarded by an academy that was established in 1954. The award is given to a French jazz musician who has proven to be exceptional in the past year, as voted by a college of 81 members this year. This group includes journalists, writers, photographers, musicologists, programmers, presenters, and club owners, among others.

“Modernize, rejuvenate and feminize”

The evening was presided over for the first time by Jean-Michel Proust, who succeeded François Lacharme last year. The French Disk prize was given to pianist-conductor-arranger Laurent Cugny for his work Tent zeitgeist. The grand prize of the Jazz Academy, acknowledging the best album of 2023, was awarded to Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and alto saxophonist Pierrick Pédron for their duo album Gazebo. The Évidence prize, which recognizes an extraordinary new recording, was given to the trio of pianist Mark Priore for In the beginning. Swiss vocalist Andreas Schaerer won the European Musician prize, while African-American singer Billy Valentine won the Blues-Soul-Gospel Artist prize for his covers album And the Universal Truth.

Since his appointment, Jean-Michel Proust – saxophonist and artistic director of the Jazz au Phare festivals on the Île de Ré and Montrouge Paris Guitar Festival – has expressed his intent to “put the Academy back at the heart of its time”. One of his main goals is to “modernize, rejuvenate and feminize the voting body”, as he shared with AFP. As a result of this initiative, 13 additional women have been added to the college, bringing the total number of women to 15 out of the 81 members. Another change made by Proust was reducing the number of awards from 11 to 7, “in order to give them more weight”.