Biography

Born in 1963, Paul Sanchez grew up in a very versatile musical environment. His mother and grand father being respectively accomplished singer and Violonist, he got the chance to be exposed to all sort of music influences from classical, jazz, south american music since he was a child, surrounded by brother and sisters studying Piano and Violin.

Paul discovered classical guitar when he was 8, started classical guitar at 15 and after a couple of years his interest shifted to finger picking style. After a rather hectic period (he dropped guitar and picked up again, drop,etc..), Paul bought his first electric guitar when he was 22.

« At that time I was listening to heavy rock/metal bands (KISS, MOTÖRHEAD), progressive rock (SAGA, PINK FLOYD, YES) along with classical music. »

Started playing in cover bands and trio at 24 and after 4 years Paul had the growing feeling he was running in circle (and losing interest in what I was doing), one day, Florian (fellow keyboard player) showed up at home with a tape of band he never heard of before: UZEB / Noisy Nights.
That was a revellation, this just blew him away.

« I instantly loved the harmony, the intense, complex and beautiful guitar playing of Michel CUSSON as well as the musical arrangements and virtuosity of UZEB.
I started digging into Jazz, Jazz Fusion (heavy metal jazz), and (re)discovered in the process extradordinary musicians Miles DAVIS, Charlie PARKER, Michel PETRUCCIANI, Wes MONTGOMERY to name a few. »

At that time Paul also started listening to more contemporary classical music in particular Charles lVES, György LIGETI, Aaron COPELAND, Gabriel FAURE and Maurice RAVEL.
He moved to Paris and Amsterdam for professionnal reasons and stopped playing almost completely for 4 years only jamming sporadically with friends.

After settling down in Geneva, Paul thought it was high time to get serious about playing Jazz/Fusion music. He enrolled in one of the local pro music school evening program and studied Harmony, jazz/blues guitar for 3 years and met very talented musicians (Ingrid WILDEMAN and Serge GENAOUI). It was at that the time Pascal SAVOYE (IGNEM Bass guitar) and Paul met (he was playing guitar by then) and started to jam together with other local musicians.