Alexandra Grimal, born May 28, 1980 in Cairo, is a French singer-songwriter of contemporary music. A saxophonist and singer, she performs in interdisciplinary projects such as theater and contemporary dance. Biography : Daughter of the Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal and the Anglican Geneviève Defradas-Grimal, and sister of the violinist David Grimal, she grew up between Egypt and Paris listening to classical music and jazz, but also many other styles. She began studying classical piano at the age of five. At thirteen, at a time when she listens to the recordings of Louis Armstrong, Coltrane and Miles Davis.

she decides to go to saxophone and jazz. She went to study saxophone in 2000 at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague (in) in the class of saxophonist and American clarinettist John Ruocco (de).

In 2003, she joined the Sibelius Academy's Jazz Department in Helsinki, Finland, with a scholarship from the Socrates European exchange program. Back in the Netherlands, she graduated in 2004 with a bachelor and then in 2005 a master's degree in saxophone at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

His stay in the Netherlands allows him to meet musicians of all nationalities. In 2005 she returned to France and continued her studies at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris, from where she resigned shortly thereafter, unable to obtain a European diploma equivalence, and began performing in clubs.

In 2009 she is a laureate of the "Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation", which allows her to record Owls Talk with Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian. The same year she released her first album in trio, Shape, with Antonin Rayon (organ) and Emmanuel Scarpa (drums) 4, followed in 2010 by Seminaro Vento with her European quartet composed of pianist Giovanni Di Domenico, bassist Manolo Cabras, and drummer João Lobo, album rewarded by a shock of Jazz Magazine.

Alexandra Grimal receives a 2009 MacDowell Fellowship and gets a two-month stay at the prestigious MacDowell Colony, an artist colony in New Hampshire. This experience of creative isolation and artistic encounters nourishes her work and allows her to devote herself fully to the writing of her future compositions (especially those of her album Andromeda.

) In 2012, she receives a new invitation to the colony for a stay. five weeks.

She performs in the Kankū trio with Eric Échampard (drums) and Sylvain Daniel (electric bass) 7. She is leader of the Nāga project (with Marc Ducret, Nelson Veras, Stéphane Galland, Benoit Delbecq, Lynn Cassiers, Jozef Dumoulin) 8.

She is also soloing a sequel titled The Monkey in the Abstract Garden. She is a member of Olivier Benoit's National Jazz Orchestra (ONJ 2014), the Can You Hear Me?

Joëlle Léandre.