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“Anytime I get a chance, I love going to see my friends and hearing what they’re doing,” Moullier said of other vibes players.
(Photo: Shervin Lainez)Examples of thespians who want to be rock stars or pro athletes who want to act can be found throughout pop culture history. In Simon Moullier, one finds the rare vibraphone virtuoso who originally wanted to play a horn.
A native of Nantes in Western France, the 28-year-old’s musical journey includes several instruments, at least two musical genres, two continents and both North American coasts. His most recent stop includes a self-released third album, Isla, which features pianist Lex Korten, double bassist Alexander Claffy and drummer Jongkuk Kim.
“I started on drums when I was 6 or 7,” Moullier said, in a phone conversation from his home in Brooklyn. “I was building some drums at home with kitchen pots and pans, and I was always very attached to the drumset. It was my first instrument and the foundation to what I’m doing now.”
Classical percussion would be Moullier’s formal area of study, though he continued to play drums on the side. “It was very important in developing discipline in practice and learning how to focus,” he said. “But on the side, yeah, I was playing drums in a few bands here and there. James Brown, Michael Jackson and Earth Wind & Fire were among his non-classical favorites. “We had a few ensembles that I participated in once in a while. It was a lot of fun.”
Life changed at 17, and his mother’s love of the blues as well as his interest in jazz came to the forefront. “I started rotating more toward notes. I really wanted to play saxophone or a horn instrument. But since I already spent 10 years on percussion, I stuck with it.”
Moullier took a transatlantic jump that same year, attending a five-week summer camp at the Berklee College of Music. He signed up as a drummer, but fate, in the form of sheer numbers, would send him in another direction.
“I was much better at jazz drums, and I didn’t know any melodies, I didn’t know any forms,” he shared. When he arrived, there were “an overwhelming” number of students in the drum audition room. “Seeing the vibes audition room, there were like three people. So I thought, ‘Man, maybe I should switch to that.’ I didn’t have anything prepared, of course, and I didn’t even have mallets.
“So the guy kind of looked at me funny, but he saw something that I clearly wasn’t seeing,” he said. “And this five-week camp really changed my life. It showed me that vibes is actually what I wanted to pursue instead of drums. Playing notes and playing melodies was really freeing, and it was such a magic feeling.
“I did have some chops already — a little bit on marimba, xylophone and vibraphone,” Moullier added. “And all the classical studies gave me some background with how to hold the mallets, whether you’re using two or four.”
After high school, Moullier attended Berklee as an undergraduate and found a mentor in trumpeter, flugehornist and professor Darren Barrett. He’d go on to earn a master’s degree from the Hancock Institute of Jazz (formerly the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz) in Los Angeles and has maintained friendships and musical relationships with classmates from both institutions.
Bassist Luca Alemanno, who plays on Moullier’s first two albums — Spirit Song from 2020 and Countdown from 2021 — was in his Hancock Institute class. And he and Kim, who played on all three albums, attended Berklee together.
Vibraphone is, of course, one of the lesser-pursued instruments in jazz. Moullier has used that uniqueness to both play with a variety of bandleaders — including pianist Miki Yamanaka, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Jason Tiemann — and bond with fellow vibraphonists.
“At least with those in New York, we definitely all know each other,” he said, of the current wave of vibraphonists that includes Joel Ross, Sasha Berliner, Chien Chien Lu, Juan Diego Villalobos and other rising stars. “We support each other. Anytime I get a chance, I love going to see my friends and hearing what they’re doing. I get inspiration from it.”
As for Isla, Moullier opted for total independence and simplicity. “I’ve never done a self-release, so I wanted experience it,” he said. Spirit Song was released by the New York-based Outside In Music, while Countdown saw the light of day via Fresh Sound New Talent Records out of Barcelona.
“The front cover is a photo I took [of the island of Ouessant, off of Moullier’s coastal hometown],” he said. “So it definitely has a very homemade vibe, which is what I was going for. I just wanted to keep it simple. Same for the music. I didn’t want too many tracks, so it’s only eight.”
Six of the eight tracks are originals and showcase Moullier’s prowess as a composer. The title track alternately glides and swings effortlessly, while “This Dream” advances hypnotically with intertwining vibraphone and piano lines. Fred Coots’ “You Go To My Head,” one of two standards, is interpreted with equal parts sophistication and playfulness.
Moullier also kept things even simpler, sonically, by making Countdown a trio outing. “You have a lot of responsibility, because the bass and drums already have their full sound,” he explained. “There’s so much space that I really cherish. Sometimes it’s also about not playing, and I feel like trios are a really good setup to learn about that.”
Lest one think that Moullier is only concerned with horn players as role models, he reassures that he’s done his musical homework.
“I’m really still just trying to copy Coltrane or Charlie Parker,” he admitted. “That being said, it doesn’t mean I don’t listen to other vibraphonists. I think it’s very important to follow the lineage and understand all of those recordings.
“There are so many beautiful things that I’m still discovering every month,” he concluded. “I still get inspiration from the elders. I definitely love Bobby Hutcherson. I love his compositions. I love what Milt Jackson contributed to the language of the vibraphone, and I love Lionel Hampton for all the rhythmic aspects that he brought to the instrument.” DB
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