French musicians

Imhotep_(musician)

Pascal Perez (born 19 May 1960), better known by his stage name Imhotep, is an Algerian-born French record producer and composer. In addition to his solo work including albums Blue Print and Kheper and producing of other artists, he was one of the founding members of the Marseille hip hop band IAM and its sound architect.

Eric_Levi

Éric Jacques Levisalles, stage name Eric Lévi (Paris, 1955) is a French rock musician and film composer.In 1975, Eric Lévi founded the hard rock band Shakin' Street with Fabienne Shine, which would release the two albums Vampire Rock and Solid as a Rock. Shakin' Street briefly toured with AC/DC and the Blue Öyster Cult before disbanding in 1981. He then moved to New York, and back to Paris in 1992.
Later on in his career, Eric Lévi wrote the musical score to several films, including L'Opération Corned-beef the comedy Les Visiteurs which was an international success and one of the highest-grossing films of all time in France, and La Vengeance d'une Blonde. Levi wrote the end-credit song People And Places for La Vengeance d'une Blonde with Philip Bailey and Roxanne Seeman. People And Places was recorded by Dee Dee Bridgewater and Philip Bailey for the film soundtrack. It was released as a single and on the soundtrack album as a single, club mix, and instrumental version.Lévi is best known for the musical project Era, and for inventing the Latin-sounding words of these songs. Era's self-titled debut album in 1997 was commercially successful, becoming the most exported French album with over 6 million copies sold. A sequel, Era 2 was released in 2000, followed by Era: The Mass in 2003. The trilogy is characterized by a mixture of rock, synth, and pseudo-Latin Gregorian chant.

Tristan_Klingsor

Tristan Klingsor, birth name (Arthur Justin) Léon Leclère (born Lachapelle-aux-Pots, Oise department, 8 August 1874; died Nogent-sur-Marne, 3 August 1966), was a French poet, musician, painter and art critic, best known for his artistic association with the composer Maurice Ravel.
His pseudonym, combining the names of Wagner's hero Tristan (from Tristan und Isolde) and his (Wagner's) villain Klingsor (from Parsifal), indicates one aspect of his artistic interests, though he said that he chose the names because he liked the "sounds" they made, the associations with Arthurian and Breton legends he had read as a child, and that there were already too many literary men in Paris with the surname Leclère. Some of his "orientalist" poems are addressed to a mysterious "jeune étranger," possibly symbolising his gay orientation, although he did marry in 1903, and had a daughter two years later. His first collection, Filles-fleurs (1895), was in eleven-syllable verse. After this he often used a personal form of free verse. He was a member of the Fantaisiste group of French poets. Certain of his poems were set to music by composers including Charles Koechlin, Georges Hüe and Georges Migot, and he is best remembered as providing the texts for Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade (1903). He and Ravel belonged to the Paris avant-garde artistic group known as Les Apaches for whose meetings he was sometimes the host. He recorded his long acquaintance with the composer in an essay, "L'Époque Ravel". Ravel dedicated the first of his Trois Chansons to him in 1915.
Klingsor was also a painter (exhibiting from 1905 at the Salon d'Automne and being awarded the Prix Puvis de Chavannes in 1952). His visual art was reviewed twice by Guillaume Apollinaire: In 1906, he called Klingsor's attempts "Merde!" but in 1908, he was kinder, stating: "Klingsor animates his painting with the same sentimental delicacy that gives his poetry its somewhat contrived, dated charm. For my part, I prefer the poet to the painter.” He was also the author of several studies on art, and a composer in his own right, with several collections of melodies, four-part songs, and piano music.