Born in 1980 (Paris-France), Delphine Dora is a french artist, who learned the piano (classical background) as a child for 9 years (from 6 years old to 15). She started to do music again at the age of 24, concentrating to record her own stuff, more spontaneously: free-form songs, in an imaginary and oniric langage, exploring the many possibilities of piano and voice expression.
A diva of piano improvisation and atypical personality, she unveils her hints of lunacy through often short but sometimes endless pieces, always crowded with ghostly characters, gestures filled with grace, and shizophrenic voices which cannot let anybody feel indifferent. Apart the piano (her main instrument of predilection), she also plays a whole array of instruments including harmonium, harpsichord, keyboards, organ, percussions, vibraphone, glockenspiel in different recordings...
Inpired by outsider art, performance, action painting, some female contemporary photography, some avant-garde research, improvisations, all differents kinds of music (classical piano, folk, pop, psychedelic, baroque, avant-garde, outsider, free jazz, world, and some contemporary music..), she distills sounds and graphic works that are closer to performance than composition, grasping tightly the fragility and the disquiet of the discovery of oneself, in its rawest expression.
After having published her first works in the “Musics in margins” series of Another record in 2005, this underground activist graces us her intimacy, with these collections of very short piano pieces ("floating existence" (2005-Another Record), "confusion of myself" (2005- Greed Recordings), "blablabla" (2006- Abaton Book Company)), put to tape using a fairly DIY technique with an old tape machine, hence the lovely background hiss, with voices using a language only she knows thus opening the gates of our imagination. In 2005, she released also a free experimental ep "for christmas" made of keyboards and vocal experimentations.
Having accompanied Dana Hilliot on his first two LPs, she released a collaborative album of improvisations and instant compositions "we're all of this" (2007-Greed Recordings) around her piano pieces and all sorts with her friends Valérie Leclercq aka Half Asleep (We are Unique Records) and Jullian Angel (Another Record). It's her most achieved and varied release to date. She released also the same year, an album of avant-garde-piano and improvised songs, in her collaborated project Dora'li "Saeglin" (2007-Young Girls Records) with her friend 'Li (Aurélie, the ex-singer of the "cult" french noise band Gina Artworth).
You can hear many of these recordings for free download, thanks to the Creative Commoun Licence on archive.org.
On stage, she did some rare live appearances in 2007 (for the first time) where she played improvisations performances, in such places like Espai art contemporari (castellon, spain), peniche el alamein (paris), some squats in brussels,.. and shared stage with wonderful people such as Half asleep (from Belgium), Baby Dee (USA-Drag City), Lau Nau (Finland-Locust Music), Wounded Knee (scotland), etc.... She also did live soundtrack for avant-garde Maja Deren short movie 'Meshes of the Afternoon" in some concert shows.
She's now very busy, because preparing a thesis on outsider art about socio-anthropological perspectives. But she's actually working on a collaboration album with the italian experimental and avant-folk artist Salvatore Borrelli, who performs as (etre), Harps of Fuschia Kalmia, Wondrous Horse. The new project is called Le Devenir-animal, and it's a kind of concept album inspired by Gilles Deleuze's philosophy.
She has many dreams for her future: she'd love to collaborate with her friend SRX or many good musicians, and love also to do an entire album with organ and voice, to record some harmonium in a church, record with a grand piano and a string quartet, and free jazz musicians...
Bonjour Delphine, merci d'avoir accepté, pensant à francesca Woodman, j'ai écrit CONTACT-PAGE,on peut l'écouter sur la page fictionsintimes. Dommage que nous sommes si éloignés, j'aurais vraiment plaisir d'essayer quelque chose avec vous et votre harmonium, ça m'intéresse... Hervé.
hello sweetie! merci pour le rappel, qui tombe a pic puisqu'une nouvelle fournee devrait etre mise en ligne le 21 de ce mois ci; avant de s'en retourner hiberner pour un an, probablement :-) disons que l'encre s'evapore de la plume, un peu l'impression de radoter et resservir les memes mots/maux et force est de reconnaitre que je deviens moins aventureux et musicophage avec le temps 9entre les demenagements, le grand amour et le boulot a plein temps plus qu'a pleines tempes, ca devient aussi moins evident de concillier tout ca)... mais bon, vedremmo... j'etais agreablement surpris de voir une pubs pour ton cd dans le "wire" garde ta force et ta fragilite intactes, multibiz
"...Then the colours sank an octave deeper; the sitting room filled up with darkness as if plunged into the luminosity of the deep sea, although even now it was dimly reflected in mirrors of green, while all the torrid heat of the day breathed on the blinds, gently swaying to the reveries of the midday hour." (Bruno Schulz)
thank you for the most excellent travel and performance company, i had such a lovely time. we should do it again! the rest of the sunday we spent riding bicycles and playing ping pong until the crazy late flight to home... i was tired for a day but now happy again, there is lots of snow and beautiful pale winter light here. love, lau
Merci pour le lien Delph. Une perle ton concert sur la péniche El Alamein. Vraiment très beau ! La chance! Bon voyage dans ta migration prochaine vers le sud ;) a+++
Hi Delphine, nice to hear from you and thank you for your really kind comment! I will most definitely keep you updated on what I am doing! I was hoping to have something released in september but circumstances etc held it back!! Hope things cool with you ,keep us posted and feel free to write whatever and whenever you want :)
