Jean-Marc Montera
guitarist

A French guitarist with a rock background, specializing in free improvisation and sound experimentation, Jean-Marc Montera uses the entire range of amplified and acoustic strings - resonance, percussion, distortion, extensions and detour of all kinds. Among the most active musicians in the field of improvised music, he has been multiplying his encounters and contacts with other artistic worlds since the 1970s, until the "barrier" between genres became increasingly blurred. He performs solo and in different formations: AMP (Guitar Trio, Akchoté / Montera / Pauvros), The Room (with Sophie Gonthier), Meditrio (with Julien Ferrando and Jean-Michel Robert), The Invisible Ensemble (with Famoudou Don Moyé of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Paul Elwood, Emmanuel Cremer, Simon Sieger, Thomas Weirich), Loas (with Nico Morcillo), etc. He has made numerous collaborations with theater, dance, visual arts and image. He founded the Ensemble d'Improvisateurs Européens with Hans Koch, Thomas Lehn, Hélène Breschand, Daan Vandewalle, Lelio Giannetto, Chris Cutler and Taavi Kerikmaé, an ensemble specialized in the interpretation of graphic scores. He has collaborated with Fred Frith, André Jaume, Barre Phillips, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Louis Sclavis, Michel Doneda, Ahmad Compaoré, Christine Wodrascka, Pauline Oliveros, Pascal Contet, Gérard Siracusa, Floros Floridis, Carlos Zingaro, Paul Lovens, Christian Wolff. He is present on thirty records, the latest being What's Up? (2013) around the women poets of the Beat Generation, Union Of The Supreme Light (2016) with My Cat is An Alien, a duet with Jean-François Pauvros (2017). The latter was released as his first opus, on his label The End mAde RecordS, for which he designs and produces the covers, printed in very few copies (about thirty for this first opus - sold out). Jean-Marc Montera is the founder of GRIM (Groupe de Recherche et d'Improvisation Musicales) created in 1978. In 1999 he joined forces with the author and director Hubert Colas to found Montévidéo, a center for contemporary creations in Marseille. In 2016 he became an associate artist of the GMEM, joined by the GRIM.