Noted for the strength and texture of her vocals, Elisabeth Kontomanou launched her career in her native France as a jazz singer and songwriter. By the release of her self-titled debut in 1993, she had already collaborated with Michel Legrand and completed international tours. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s she lived in New York City, a period that produced the 2004 album Midnight Sun. Around the time of her 2006 debut at the Montreal International Jazz Festival she relocated to Stockholm, later recording Siren Song: Live at Arsenal with the Lorraine National Orchestra in 2009. Her tenth album, the 2014 set Amoureuse, marked her first collection performed entirely in French.
Born in Sète, France, in 1961, Kontomanou drew early vocal inspiration from Flora Purim, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mahalia Jackson. In 1986 she formed the jazz quartet Conversation, which subsequently won the Défense Jazz Festival competition. Her first solo album, Elisabeth Kontomanou, was recorded with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, bassist Thomas Bramerie, drummer Pierre Dayraud, and bugle player Stéphane Belmondo and issued by European Music Productions in 1993. She moved to New York City two years later.
Her second album, Embrace, appeared on SteepleChase in 1999 and earned a Django d’Or nomination. Hands & Incantation, again featuring Pilc, followed in 2000. For her Nocturne debut, 2004’s Midnight Sun, she worked with Bramerie, pianist Stefan Rusconi, and drummer Ali Jackson, interpreting standards by Cole Porter and Jerome Kern alongside the original composition “All Alone,” co-written with Bramerie and A. Olitt. In 2006 she served as featured vocalist on pianist Franck Amsallem’s A Week in Paris: A Tribute to Billy Strayhorn and released her own Waitin’ for Spring, which included contributions from guitarist John Scofield, pianist Laurent Coq, and her son, drummer Donald Kontomanou. (Her other son, Gustav Karlström, works as a composer.) That same year she performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival and received the Victoires du Jazz award for vocal jazz.
By the time she recorded her sixth album, 2007’s Back to My Groove, Kontomanou was based in Stockholm; the sessions featured pianist Orrin Evans, percussionist Leon Parker, and her son Donald. Brewin’ the Blues came out on Nocturne the following year, and the live recording Siren Song: Live at Arsenal was issued by Plus Loin Music in 2009. A 2012 collaboration with pianist Geri Allen, Secret of the Wind, appeared on Outnote and Effendi Records.
Kontomanou returned to the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 2014 with the release of her first French-language album, Amoureuse, on Plus Loin. Although she issued no further recordings for the remainder of the decade, she maintained a steady performance schedule, including regular appearances with a quartet featuring Pilc and duo tours alongside pianist Laurent Courthaliac.
