Jean-Jacques
Milteau

主要经历

"J.J. Milteau is a planet surveyor: the harmonica lends itself to travel and the blues loves crossovers."

As we know, anniversary dates allow us to contemplate the progress made, or even to establish a progress report. While half a century separates "Key to the Highway", Jean-Jacques Milteau's latest album, from his very first collection, we are struck as much by the eclecticism of his musical affinities as by the constancy of the outlook that it concerns the world and its occupants.

Like Robert Doisneau or Georges Simenon (whom André Gide and Colette said was the greatest literary painter of his time), Milteau traveled the planet to better immerse himself in this humanity with with which he identifies while knowing his imperfections. From the popular Paris of Porte d'Italie where he was born to the gilding of the Opéra Garnier, from the Arctic Circle to South Africa, from Shanghai to Havana via the stage of the Nice Jazz Festival shared with B.B. King, from blues to country and from Celtic melodies to the soul of the Memphis ghetto, he has always shown that the boundaries between genres, just like those established by people, are content to celebrate differences whose combination draws the humanity.

At the origin of this human journey, the harmonica, an inexpensive and versatile instrument which allowed him to visit all continents and have a series of improbable encounters, in the musical sphere as in his personal life. Through his numerous collaborations (Gil Scott-Heron as Eddy Mitchell, Eric Bibb and Yves Montand, Terry Callier, Barbara, Charlie McCoy, Harrison Kennedy, J.J.Goldman, Little Milton…) and the recording of around twenty albums , rewarded with Victoires de la Musique for two of them, Milteau knew how to translate the world into notes by putting his virtuosity, never gratuitous, at the service of pure emotion, sensitivity and modesty that it conceals willingly under his sphinx-like appearance.

In the space of half a century, his inner wealth and his sense of personal commitment (radio broadcasts, associative work, actions aimed at the sick) have made Jean-Jacques Milteau a privileged witness whose work , associated with his wanderings, describes the humanity of his time. 

Faithful to the curiosity that has always carried him, it is not surprising that travel is omnipresent in his approach, and his new album, “Key to the Highway”, is no exception to the rule since it sums up the perfection half a century of continuity in difference. Milteau's art, timeless and universal, never ceases to lead us along a luminous road of which the harmonica is the key.

http://www.jjmilteau.net