Mathias Duplessy

 

Guitar, multi-instrumentalist, composer

France

A self-taught musician, Mathias has been composing on his guitar since the age of 6. At a young age, he first became fascinated with classical music, and more particularly with Ravel, his inexhaustible source of inspiration. Then came the discovery of jazz, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, resounding in his Walkman on the way to school.

He flies away from the family nest at 18 years old and very quickly, accompanies on stage the big names of the Parisian World Music... ) He stays regularly in Granada, where he is initiated to the flamenco among the gypsies. There he developed and invented particular techniques for the right hand which he used on stage or in his compositions.

In love with traditional music, he learns to play instruments coming from the four corners of the world... Morin khuur, Igil, fiddles, Jew's harp, berimbau, flutes and percussions of all kinds, saz, oud, banjo populate his recording studio, and feed his orchestrations.  Mathias likes to divert, mix, and reinvent the artistic universe of these instruments far from the paths of their origins by superimposing his voluptuous voice or throat singing technique.

Soundtrack composer
Mathias is also a film lover, he regularly composes for films (in India and France), documentaries (more than 60 films for Arte, France televisions etc...). In 2014, the music he composed for the Indian film Finding Fanny, got two nominations for best background score (Film fair award & Radio mirchi award), in France he got in 2020 the award for best documentary film music (UCMF).
He also likes to compose and perform music for cartoons: Mouk, Pirata & Capitano, The Sisters, The Wolf, Edmond & Lucy...

Classical music
His work for guitar is always very pictorial ( tribute to Vermeer, Hiroshigé....), with very strong narrative climates, (Oulan Bator, De rêve et de pluie, Cavalcade...) we find in his compositions the influences of Ennio Morricone, Gismonti or Ravel. In 2011 Mathias meets Jeremy Jouve who will become the ambassador of his pieces for classical guitar, now played and recorded by the greatest international soloists (Milos, Zsofia Boros, Thu Le, Thibault Cauvin, Samuelito, Antoine Boyer, Julien Martineau, Avi Avital...)

Albums and concerts
A dozen albums to his name he travels the planet with his group "Duplessy & The Violins of The World" 15,000 albums sold and 12 million views on Facebook on their title "Crazy Horse", which closes the show "Bonne nuit Blanche" of Blanche Gardin. He plays with the trio Cavalcade (Jérémy Jouve and Prabbhu Edouard) in Europe and USA and with the Indian sufi singer Mukhtiyar Ali.

"We start to dream of a world where all the earphones would be in sync to diffuse Mathias Duplessy's music". 

André Manoukian