Photo credit: ©Marie Rouge
"Preventing her from humming in circles, too madly in love with music to put it away in watertight boxes, Marion Rampal, like Nina Simone or Joni Mitchell, does as she pleases, which she keeps as close to the stars as she does to her heart" (Richard Robert, Nuits de Fourvière). Timeless, impervious to fashion, magnificently inventive and sumptuously moving, Marion Rampal is a total songwriter who nourishes an eminently personal repertoire of luxuriant creativity: from the most emblematic folk songs to classical scores, from pop intonations to blues confidences, her voice is a true instrument.
Born in 1980 in Marseille, Marion Rampal is a singer and author. She studied music and singing through the whimsical encounters and gifts of life: a mother who invented lullabies in the Michel Legrand way, a pianist grandfather who played all Nat King Cole in F, a few flute lessons - but nothing like the flutist! -Then, as a teenager, she started writing songbooks - in English - with a passion for Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Her Rock & Folk loves led her in 1998 to found the group Wesh Wesh with François Richez for whom she composed the lyrics and co-signed the music, then the duo We Used to Have a Band. Marion also collaborates with guitarist Tristan Loriaut on a project dedicated to the poetry of Jim Morrison: Open Wild.
From 2002 to 2004 she studied at IMFP and at the Marseille Conservatory. She set up a sextet project in homage to the first Walt Disney movie soundtracks: Super Kali & The Fragili-Sticks in collaboration with the guitarist and composer Rémy Jouffroy.
On the occasion of a commission for the Jeunesses Musicales de France, she created, alongside pianist Benjamin Rando, the show "I Got Plenty!", a musical and narrative adaptation of G. Gershwin's opera Porgy & Bess. She participated in many cabaret, theatre and contemporary creation projects, as a singer or narrator, notably with the collectives "Territoire3" or "La Force Molle".
Since 2005, she has collaborated in several creations within the Nine Spirit Company under the artistic direction of Raphaël Imbert. It is on her label that she wrote and released "Own Virago" in 2009. In 2011, Marion is the voice and the pen of "Vertigo Songs" by Perrine Mansuy (Laborie/Abeille 2011).
Noticed by Archie Shepp with whom she collaborates since 2012 in France and in the USA, she joined the Attica Blues and the Archie Shepp Quintet (the album " I Hear the Sound ", Archieball /HM2013, nominated at the Grammy Awards), then she recorded "Heavens" then "Music Is My Home" with Raphael Imbert for Jazz Village (Jazz Village/HM 2013).
She has long been passionate about poetic research on what she calls "the gestures of the Blues", and inspired by her travels in Louisiana and New York, she began writing "Main Blue" in 2013, alongside Anne Paceo and Pierre-François Blanchard. The album, composed in English and French, has been released in 2016 on the E-motive records label (Fip Selection and Artist of the Year Jazz Radio).
Performing Purcell's "Dido's Lament" or a Schubert Lieder, Marion Rampal also pursued a bushy but always demanding pickaxe in the classical repertoire to find new standards. The singer lent her voice to the great arias of the 1930s Berlin cabaret alongside the Manfred Quartet in the project "Bye Bye Berlin" in 2018 (with Harmonia Mundi/PIAS for which she was nominated for the Opus Klassik Prize in 2019).
Finally, the songwriter lends her words with pleasure to the voices and music of others. She has written lyrics for the singer Virginie Teychené, for Anne Paceo (in "Circles", performed by Leila Martial) or Raphaël Imbert (in "Music is my Home", performed by Leyla McCalla, Alabama Slim and Big Ron Hunter).
With Pierre-François Blanchard, she forms a duo with multiple strings that revisits melodies and lieder in an unusual and libertarian way. Their common news is the release of the album "Le Secret" (Music Ovation) in 2019.
Her crossroads with Bossa Flor was in 2017 for the presentation with Pierre-François of the album "Main Blue". She joined the Bossa Flor program for an annual rendezvous since then, with a presentation of the album "Le secret" in February 2020.