Welmyr
Jean-Pierre

Welmyr Jean-Pierre is a Haitian pianist, composer, arranger and orchestrator whose work moves between classical training, jazz improvisation, gospel and the folkloric rhythms of Haiti — often inside a single piece.

He began classical piano at five and a half and went on to formal study under Professor Solon C. Verettes, taking conservatory prizes along the way. Clarinet is his second instrument. That classical foundation sits underneath everything he plays, but it was never the whole of it: he moves without seam between jazz phrasing, gospel voicing and the rock and rhythm-and-blues idioms.

As a sideman, session player and studio hand he has worked across gospel, Haitian popular music and jazz — with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir on I’m Amazed…LIVE, with Emeline Michel on Rasin Kreyol and on earlier projects as engineer and keyboard arranger, and with Beethova Obas and the NY All Stars. On Lov’s Men Nou Papa he worked as both engineer and multi-instrumentalist — one of several credits where the roles of player, arranger and producer collapse into one.

Originally from Cap-Haïtien, he is also a civil engineer by profession — the Haitian press styles him Ing. Welmyr Jean-Pierre. The two careers have run alongside one another rather than in sequence.

• InstrumentsPiano · clarinet · keyboards, organ, synthesizer
• DisciplinesComposition · arrangement · orchestration · recording engineering
• IdiomsHaitian folkloric · jazz · gospel · classical

Much of what calls itself Caribbean jazz takes a jazz form and lays a Haitian rhythm underneath it as colour. Remove the rhythm and the piece still stands, a little duller.

Jean-Pierre’s compositions invert that arrangement. The pattern carries the structure, so the piece could not exist without it — take the drum away and there is nothing left to play. It is the organising idea behind Mozayik, the creole jazz ensemble he shares with drummer Gashford Guillaume and guitarist Eddy Bourjolly, and it runs through three releases including the international reissue Haitian Creole Jazz on Zoho Music.

The rhythm is not underneath the composition. It is the composition.

The method is easier heard than described. Start with the most played.

Pot-Pouri Louwanj — with Dominique Mathurin, Jeff Etienne and Andy Michel

Full catalogue

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A compositional discipline rather than repertoire. Participants leave with a way of working, and at least one sketch of their own.

• The seven patterns, in the body firstClapped and counted before they are written.
• Decoration versus structureThe same phrase treated both ways, and what collapses when the drum is removed.
• Writing the melody out of the patternPhrase length, accent and cadence derived from the rhythm rather than imposed on it.
• Harmony that does not fight the drumVoicing and rhythmic placement at the piano — and what jazz harmony has to give up.
• FormWhere solos go, and why head–solos–head often will not hold.
• Participant sketchesA short passage written to an assigned pattern, played and critiqued in the room.

• Masterclass90 minutes, demonstration-led
• WorkshopHalf day, with participant writing time
• ResidencyTwo to five days, applied to the host ensemble’s own repertoire
• Lecture-recital60 minutes, from the piano; no participation required