Born in New York City, Valerie grew up in SoHo and Greenwich Village, rocked by the music of her father, a pioneer of electronic music, her mother, born in Paris, violist in the Lincoln Center orchestra, and her neighbor jazzman Ornette Coleman.
Resolutely turned towards music, still adolescence, she works as a sound engineer with the producer New Wave Mike Thorne (Telephone, Soft Cell, The Communards …) – She continues her journey as a pianist-chorister, on tour and in the studio, with Debbie Harry (Blondie), Iggy Pop, Defunkt, Billy Preston, Nina Simone, Dr Maya Angelou, Roberta Flack, Sir Cliff Richard…
For twenty years, Valerie has been a very close collaborator of the famous duo Ashford & Simpson, artists and songwriters of many international hits for among others Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and Whitney Houston.
This collaboration leads him to cross paths with the greatest: Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, Wilson Pickett, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle or George Benson. In parallel, she created her own label, wrote and produced five albums under her name and one with her father, composed for three Off-Broadway musicals and created a charity, Feel The Music, after September 11, 2001, to help victims through music.
His fourth personal opus, Velours, is in a way a trip back to his French roots.
It is by coming regularly to France in search of her maternal family that she meets the French musicians who will give life to half of this album, the other half being recorded in New York. First collaboration with BLUES’UP Studio with Jérôme Buigues and Pierre Sibille. Also the musicians ; Franck Taieb (drums) François Gomez (bass) Philippe Jardin (drums) and the horns section with Nicolas Bodino (sax) and Marc Morlet-Hotte (trompette)
ALBUM
THE FRENCH SESSIONS
THE FRENCH SESSIONS, an inspired musical adventure, which takes us from the Ballad to the Blues, from Jazz to Funk through Reggae, to continue to groove, without forgetting a song in French “Refrain of my childhood”, written by his maternal great-uncle.
CLIPs
VIDEO
New York City Streets
Get Funkay
Supernatural Things
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