The Artistry of… Cyrille Aimée

Stephen Holden of The New York Times has described the vocalist Cyrille Aimée as having “one foot in tradition and the other in electronics.” Her artistry is double-barrelled; she bridges traditions and genres. She has experimented with electronic music. She has no boundaries when it comes to making and sharing her music.

Hers is a determination and drive that is infectious. Her journeys in her life and career point to this purposed determination coolly meeting head-on all that life’s hard and soft knocks can inflict. It seems that no matter what the adversity or challenge, she finds a way to land solidly on her own feet — and often hitting the ground running.

Improvisation, for Aimée, is a place without fear. She confronts it and finds a sweetness in its many challenges. She is proud of the varied and vital artistic and communicative skills gained from singing on street corners when she was starting out. You can hear how the mix of tradition, attention-holding and demanding has resulted in the way she shares her music.

She is a songwriter’s muse and this magic captured the musical attentions of the late Stephen Sondheim. A songwriter herself, her position is enviable; her diverse kit of influences makes her her own perfect muse, too. Fearless, diverse, and always in some kind of motion, Cyrille Aimée is an adventurer’s muse.