Biography

Clotilde is a multidisciplinary creator who employs a range of artforms to generate new poetic languages. She combines music, song, dance, and the visual arts to make singular performance pieces, concerts, and films. Her kaleidoscopic visions liberate imaginations, depictions, and emotions. Clotilde orchestrates these interwoven structures by throwing off conventions, giving way to emergences, she calls “random synchronicities”.

For her, the creative journey is visceral, drawing from the vibrant matter of life—a pulse sparked by encounters, a way to explore the world and feel truly alive within it. She approaches artistic expression in its multiplicity, as chromatic archipelagos open to inspiration. She tirelessly gathers connections, meetings, and surprises along the way, inviting artists to join her works and chart their own journeys within them. “I love to immerse myself in difference, in that zone of discomfort that demands greater awareness.” Inspired by Dada and the Surrealists, she treasures the unexpected, with its accidental synchronisms. “I aspire to take people on a journey—to take someone’s hand and set off together. There will be more pleasant moments and less pleasant ones, but in the end, we’ll both feel more alive.”

Clotilde began studying music at the conservatory at the age of 5, focusing on the flute, and gradually explored the performing arts through music, theater, and dance. She quickly set out to expand her own music, pushing her creative boundaries beyond genres to forge new artistic territories where her visions could emerge. She explores the subconscious and dreams as paths to “directly strike at the audience’s emotional structure.” By her twenties, she had created two multidisciplinary shows blending music, storytelling, and dance: On the Road of the Gypsies and Monsieur Jazz. She delved into the vocal instrument’s plastic possibilities through bone vibrations and extended vocal techniques. An insatiable traveler, she has lived in Ireland, Lebanon, the Balkans, the United States, and Burkina Faso. Each journey fertilizes new exchanges that start from the grounding of encounters and rise to the poetry of revealed things.

Her mid-length film XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ] (2018) exemplifies her interdisciplinary approach. Selected for over 30 international festivals, it won 5 awards and nominations, confirming her talent for blending visual and musical arts.

Her most recent album, Kananayé (2024), showcases her years-long collaboration with four musicians from Burkina Faso, featuring a repertoire that blends slam and songs in French, Dioula, Mooré, and English, with an improvisational spirit rooted in West African traditional music. The group’s sound travels between Paris and Bobo-Dioulasso, telling stories of contemporary life. It takes cues from the blues and crosses Afro-American influences to offer a fresh sound, grounded in the musicians’ camaraderie and clear joy in performing together.

Eastern Spring (2022), her latest album with the duo Madeleine & Salomon, received 4 stars from Télérama, 4 stars from JazzWise (UK), and “Editor’s Choice” from Jazziz (US), and made Jazz News x Jazz Magazine’s “Best of 2022.” This follows their first album, A Woman’s Journey (2016), a tribute to American protest singers that won 16 awards, including 6 for best album in France and the USA. Her second album, In Extremis (2008), was ranked in the Top 5 albums of 2011 by The Sunday Times (UK) and of 2013 by NPR’s Annual Jazz Critics Poll. Her international career has taken her to renowned venues and festivals across Germany, Australia, Burkina Faso, China, Korea, France, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

An international artist, artistic director, vocalist-flutist, producer, and mentor, Clotilde is above all an explorer—of her own dreams, of synesthetic languages, of bodies, of music, and of narratives—all in service to the stories that move her.

Random synchronicities

n. f. pl. neologism. A non-illustrative dialogue between different artistic disciplines, expressed independently yet simultaneously. The art of the poetry of things revealed.

Clotilde revisits the accidental synchronisms that are so well known in the film world—which Cocteau already transposed to the stage through the intercession of Roland Petit, the choreographer of the mimodrama: Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. She works at cultivating “the planned accident” through being present in the moment as a creative impulse. 

In her polyphonic works, each artistic discipline plays its own score. Infused with the same thematic thrust, yet independent in their creative paths, each discipline elevates the other to a vibration that they would not have been able to attain separately, so avoiding the pitfalls of illustration. When these scores meet, there arise accidental synchronisms susceptible to fresh perceptions, laying the foundations of a possible symbolic revolution.

Clotilde’s travels

2024: Kananayé, the debut album created in collaboration with four Burkinabè musicians, blends traditional West African music with contemporary sounds in multilingual compositions featuring socially conscious lyrics.

2022: Eastern Spring, the second album of Madeleine & Salomon, pays homage to the militant Middle Eastern pop music of the 60s and 70s. It has been ranked among the Best Of 2022 by Télérama, Jazz News and Jazz Magazine. Produced with the support from the DRAC Île de France, CNM, ADAMI, SPPF and CNC.

2021: XXY, polyphonic poetry for five musicians, five dancers, and one film; an extension of Clotilde’s reflections on the Feminine. In it she invokes a shifting of the gaze with a view to deconstructing the system of gender-related oppressions in favor of a human ideal existing fully in the fluidity of its polarities: the feminine and the masculine. Produced with the support from the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, the Ile de France region, the Ile de France Cultural Office, the Val de Marne Department, the Paris Cultural Office, the Royaumont Foundation, the Théâtre de Vanves, Le Comptoir in Fontenay, and the National Choreography Center in Créteil.

2022 – 2019: Pieces of a Song, duo with the New York pianist Chris McCarthy; a repertoire of original compositions woven from the rage and ecstasy of the texts of the Beat Generation poet, Diane di Prima. Produced with the support from the Jazz & New Music program of the French American Cultural Exchange.

2018: XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ], experimental filmed work that tackles the question of femininities in an open, poetic way, combining dance, music, song, and the visual arts. Shown in over thirty festivals worldwide, XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ] has received five awards and nominations. Produced with the support from the Secretariat of Women’s Rights, the SACEM, and the SPEDIDAM.

2016: A Woman’s Journey, first album of the duo Madeleine & Salomon with the pianist Alexandre Saada; a vibrant homage to the American women “protest singers.” The album received sixteen awards, six of which were for the best album (in France and the USA). On stage, the collection of songs is enriched by the projection of dreamlike film sequences. Produced with the support from the FCM.

2011: In Extremis, first album as composer, a quartet without bass with Olivier Hutman on the piano, Dano Haider on the seven-string guitar, and Antoine Paganotti on drums. An eclectic overlaying of textures and materials, evocative of surrealist collages, yet rooted in Clotilde’s influences: jazz, classical, world pop, and improvisation. Ranked among the top five albums of 2011 by The Sunday Times (UK) and 2013 by the NPR Annual Jazz Critics Poll (USA)—debut album category. Produced with the support from the ADAMI and the SPPF.

2007: Live aux 7 Lézards, live album of covers of pop and jazz songs in a duo with the guitarist, Hugo Lippi. Jazz Magazine called the album a “little marvel […] riskily youthful, spontaneous, free…”. Produced with the support of Paris city hall.

2002: Sur la route des Tziganes and Monsieur Jazz, multidisciplinary family shows for seven performers, in which Clotilde sang, narrated, and danced.