Jean-Baptiste Hardy - Which Way (2022)

JB was born in 1989 and grew up in the south of France. At the age of 8, he started playing the classical guitar, which he practiced for 10 years. At the same time, he devours the fingerstyle repertoire of Chet Atkins, Marcel Dadi and Jerry Reed, whose music rocked his childhood. In 2003, 2005 and 2007 he attended the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society Festival in Nashville in the United States, and had the chance to play there and meet great guitarists such as Tommy Emmanuel, Buster B Jones, Jim Nichols, Bruce Mathiske, as well as Gareth Pearson whom he will meet again in 2017 for a concert in Nantes and in 2018 in Issoudun.
Arriving in Paris in 2006, he diversified his playing, adding gospel, rock, blues and world music to fingerpicking. He plays in jam sessions, creates his own group JB & Co, performing regularly in Paris between 2009 and 2011.

In 2012, Jean-Baptiste moved to Istanbul where he devoted himself fully to his musical career. The Francophone Music School of Istanbul recruited him as a guitar teacher. Always attracted by new styles, he threw himself into jazz, approached Swing and the Gypsy Guitar, influenced by the greatest like Django Reinhardt or Biréli Lagrène, then, inspired by Georges Benson, John Scofield, Pat Martino or Antonio Carlos. Jobim, adds Bebop, Bossa Nova, funk and fusion to his very varied repertoire.
Jean-Baptiste performs for nearly 4 years on the Istanbul Jazz scene, where he works with musicians including Flapper Swing, Bilan Karaman, Uninvited jazz band, Ebru Dengiz, Ajda Ahu Giray.
It was in Istanbul that in 2014 JB recorded his first album of compositions ON VERRA, in trio with Ekin Bilgin and Riccardo Marenghi, entirely self-produced. He returned there in particular at the beginning of 2016 for the Akbank Sanat Guitar Days Festival.
Since his return to Paris at the end of 2015, JB has been present in a trio on jazz stages (Les Disquaires, Sunset sunside, the Marcounet, the Baiser Salé, at 38Riv), in solo or trio at the Théâtre la Croisée des Chemins and in France in various festivals (Couleur Guitare, Guitares de l'Espoir, Issoudun). Always full of inspiration, in 2018 he released a second album of trio compositions, REPRISE, tinged with blues, funk, fusion, Latin music, surrounded by Rory Quinn on drums and Benjamin Asnar on bass. In the same year, he recorded an album of solo compositions NEW DEPART, with classical and fingerpicking influences.
In the fall of 2021, JB presents us with his 2 facets at the Baiser salé in Paris, with the simultaneous release of his new solo album CONFIDENCES and his new trio production WHICH WAY.