Bernard Vitet, born 26 May 1934, he died 3 July 2013. He was a French composer, trumpeter, and multi-instrumentalist. He co-founded the first French free jazz band (1964), along with Francois Tusques and Michel Portal Unit (1972), and Un Drame Musical Instantane (with Jean-Jacques Birge) in 1976. Vitet was born in Paris, France. He was involved in the earliest fusion of jazz with contemporary music, along with Jean-Louis Chautemps and Bernard Parmegiani. He was a singer who accompanied Serge Gainsbourg and Yves Montand as well as Claude Francois and Brigitte Barrdot. He performed with jazz musicians like Lester Young, Archie Shepp and Don Cherry. He performed with Albert Ayler, Gus Viseur and Eric Dolphy in his early years. He recorded Surprise-partie with Bernard Vitet (on trombone) under his own name. ), La Guepe (on texts by Francis Ponge), Mehr Licht! and around 200 other records with them, plus Jean-Claude Fohrenbach and Georges Arvanitas and Sunny Murray and Ivan Jullien and Christian Chevalier. He co-signs Carton’s songs with Birge in 1995. Together, they collaborate on music for film, television, and CD-Roms. Vitet invents instruments like a reed trumpet and a multiphonic French Horn. He also invented the dragoon, which is a huge balafon that has frying pans and a keyboard. A clever system of mod clocks allows Vitet to create amazing musical objects for Georges Aperghis and Tamia Achard. He also sang, played the flugelhorn, and played piano and violin. Jean-Marie Serrault commissioned him to compose theatre music, as well as for the films (Les châtis verts by Edouard Luntz and L’ombre de la pomme with Jean-Louis Chautemps), Bof by Claude Faraldo and Jean Guerin, La femme-bourreau and La femme-bourreau, both by Jean-Denis Bonan. He mainly devoted his time to Un Drame Musical Instantane, composing and improvising hundreds of pieces with Jean-Jacques. Un D.M.I. presented multimedia shows that included cinema, video, litterature and dance, either as a trio, or with their 15-piece Orchestra. Site drame.org provides hundreds of unissued pieces that you can listen to and download. From Wikipedia
