Biography
Born on 22 January 1921 in Paris, France, Hodeir pursued years of formal musical training while simultaneously cultivating a deep attraction to jazz. During the late 1940s he contributed jazz criticism on a regular basis and rose to the position of chief editor at the French publication Jazz Hot. He also produced a significant volume that first appeared in the United States in 1956 under the title Jazz: Its Evolution And Essence. On violin he performed and recorded with an assortment of jazz ensembles alongside figures such as Django Reinhardt and Kenny Clarke. Ultimately his stronger inclination toward composition and jazz commentary brought his performing career to an early close. Between the middle of the 1950s and the close of the 1960s he jointly directed Jazz Groupe De Paris alongside Bobby Jaspar, using the group as an outlet for his own pieces. In the 1960s he explored third stream music and created works within that blended idiom. He also received frequent commissions to score motion pictures. By the 1980s Hodeir had ceased composing and directed the greater part of his efforts toward writing. Recordings of his music reveal clear gifts for composition and arrangement, yet much of the third-stream output remains somewhat inaccessible to a broad audience. His critical writings are likewise engaging and insightful, though at times combatively polemical and occasionally mildly misguided. Even so, they remain consistently stimulating, and certain extended examinations prove both penetrating and well-informed.
Albums
