Leo Tardin

Leo Tardin was the first laureate of the Montreux Jazz Festival International Piano Solo Competition, and is the sole Swiss so far to have won its 1st prize.

A few years later he started his Grand Pianoramax project and was given the opportunity to sign with the New York/Paris-based ObliqSound record label, on which he released internationally four albums and two vinyls. After many concerts with Grand Pianoramax in cities including Mumbai, Berlin, Paris, London, Lisbon, Prague, Istanbul, Milan, Rome, New York and at festivals such as Tokyo Jazz, Paléo, Jazz à Vienne, SXSW, Leo Tardin is now coming back to the piano solo format, in parallel to his activity with Grand Pianoramax.

In 2014 Leo Tardin released "Dawnscape", his debut solo piano album, in co-production with the Montreux Jazz Artists Foundation. It was launched by concerts at both the Montreux and Cully Jazz Festivals that same year, followed by other solo piano performances at events and institutions including the Festival de la Bâtie in Geneva, Piano im Pool festival at Neubad in Luzern, the Rolex Learning Center at the EPFL in Lausanne, Super Deluxe in Tokyo, Akbank Sanat in Istanbul and the Piano Solo Jazz Festival in Prague to name a few.

During his solo piano performances, Leo Tardin uses his own compositions as starting point to spontaneous interpretations and improvisations, his aim being to make the listener travel through a musical experience strongly evocative of images. Sometimes hypnotic in the use of cyclic left-hand ostinatos and often melodic, his playing always puts expressivity and spiritual depth before virtuosity.

Leo Tardin is set to release a triple-live album, thought like a souvenir book of his finest solo concerts, bringing together excerpts from more than 15 performances, having taken place over the last 4 years in locations as varied as an empty swimming pool in Lucerne, a temple in Zürich, an old fire estinguisher factory in Geneva or a century old vaulted cellar in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

In addition to this selection of live recordings, a songbook of the interpreted themes, gathering hand-calligraphed scores, as well as a series of tutorials filmed in staggered locations will also be available at the time of the release.