Benjamin Lopez

Benjamin Lopez. Jazz guitarist from Paris. He performs regularly in Paris clubs as a leader of his own band and as a sideman.

After having studied at the EDIM and the CRD of Bourg-la-Reine with the pianist Laurent Coq, the guitarist Romain Pilon and the saxophonist David Prez, he had the opportunity to study at the New School for Jazz Contemporary Music where he was able to follow during one year the courses of Dayna Stephens, Mike Moreno and Vic Juris.

His inspirations as a musician and composer range from Django Reinhardt, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk to contemporary musicians like Mark Turner, Steve Coleman and Ambrose Akinmusire. Lopez is also deeply inspired by the works of the French composer Olivier Messiaen who has had a tremendous impact on his way of conceiving music.

Since returning to Paris in 2016, he has had different bands, including a trio with which he plays a repertoire of rearranged American jazz and the band “ROBERT” with which along with the band’s co-founder Charley Rose and the pianist Jozef Dumoulin they played their original repertoire on the Sunset / Sunside and Baiser Salé stages. Lopez’s collaboration with Rose continued with the project “Viaje a la Semilla”, an intimate trio (saxophone, guitar, vocals / lyrics) that brought them to different music stages in Mexico. The idea behind this project was to create a repertoire linking French music and jazz with texts by the great authors of the literary movement “Real Maravilloso” (J. Cortazar, A. Carpentier, J. Rulfo).