Born on 18 September 1965, Thomas Bramerie studied guitar with Tony Petrucciani and continued his learning with Jean-Paul Florens. He then switched to the electric bass when he joined the Belmondo brothers’ group, then changed to the bass in 1988. He toured with Peter King, Ted Nash and Bobby Porcelli, and played with Chet Baker (1987), Toots Thielemans (1988), Horace Parlan (1989), Johnny Griffin and Steve Grossman (1990). In 1992, he met Olivier Hutman, Sangoma Everett and George Brown, forming the rhythm section of the club “La Villa St-Germain” in Paris. Between 1993 and 1996, he became a regular member of several bands: Michelle Hendriks, Laurent de Wilde, the Belmondo brothers, Christian Escoudé, André Ceccarelli, with whom he toured and recorded. Thomas moved to New York in 1997. He recorded the album Live at Yoshi’s with Grammy-nominated 2001 singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and toured all around the world with this project. He was then one of the major “sidemen” of the New York jazz scene and joined projects with Ari Hoenig, David Berkman, Jerome Sabbagh, Eric Reed, David Schnitter and Al Foster. He opened up his repertoire to other Latin jazz projects with David Sanchez and Ed Simon, Middle Eastern music with Simon Shaheen and Bassam Saba, rock with Charlie Watts in the Tim Ries band “Rolling Stones Project” and classical music with the flutist Emmanuel Pahud in Jacky Terrasson’s trio and in Daniel Schnyder’s string quartets. Since 2002, he has been a member of Simon Shaheen’s ensemble “Qantara,” with whom he has given numerous concerts around the world, including Carnegie Hall for MTV’s “We Are The Future” concert with Patti Austin & Quincy Jones. In 2006, Thomas returned to France and joined the groups of Julien Loureau (Quartet Saigon), André Ceccarelli, Baptiste Trotignon, David Elmalek and the singer Elizabeth Kontomanou. He has been part of several projects which have been nominated for or received the Victoires de la musique: with Eric Legnini, who received the 2011 Victoire de la musique for The Vox; with Pierrick Pedron for Kubic’s Monk in 2013; as well as Love for Chet by Stephane Belmondo with Jesse Van Ruller in 2016.

© Pascal Pittorino