Meet Guilhem Fourty

We recently connected with Guilhem Fourty and have shared our conversation below.

Guilhem, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. Could you share a bit about yourself before we dive into some of the questions we have for you?
My name is Guilhem Fourty, I’m a drummer, composer, producer, and educator from France currently based in Boston. I’ve worked with various artists such as Braxton Cook, Miguel Zenón, Mayu Calumbi, Ian Coury, Audrey Bussanich, Zach Santos, Kieran Brown, Pedro Couto Silva, the MIT Jazz Festival, Rakel Saranga, performing in many venues and festivals around the world. I’ve had the honor to receive different awards, from the French foundation “Fondation de La vocation Marcel Bleustein Blanchet” (2022), the Downbeat magazine student music award (2022, 2023), the 1st annual Jazz Camp Fellowship Award with Ulysses Owen Jr. and Alisson Miller (2023), and the PASIC 23 Ed Shaughnessy scholarship. I’m currently completing my 1 year Master’s program at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute under a full-tuition scholarship.

I’m currently working on some original music that will be released later this year while working as a sideman on different projects. We recently recorded an album with Zach Santos “Superbloom” that has more than 60k streams on Spotify and we’re preparing a West Coast tour later this year (more info soon!). I have also recently collaborated with xPropelr (https://www.xpropelr.org) on the project “Dreaming Freedom” which includes musicians such as Alex Isley, Justin Kaulfin, Kris Bowers, Brandee Younger, John de Faria, and many other talented musicians. I am very excited about the release of that music and to share it with you.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Curiosity is definitely at the top of the list. While being truthful to my tastes and aspirations, I’ve always been curious/adventurous and looking for situations I’ve never experienced before. This is a sort of commitment to put myself out of my comfort zone so that I can learn something out of it. This opens a lot of doors for exploration and pieces of knowledge that I wasn’t even aware of before. That means being open to different genres, traveling to experience traditional styles of music, and being willing to learn about cultures. In 2022, I organized my own mini-tour in Brazil with some great Brazilian artists, as well as a solo musical trip in Puerto Rico last summer. I can’t recommend this enough!

Time management is a big one. For a couple of years now, I’ve been learning how to manage my time at work, with family, etc. I believe that the ability to say no to save time to refocus is really important. Saves you time and much more. I mean time management also by being patient. Nowadays as an artist, we multitask a million things trying to be as efficient as possible, but I believe that It reaches a point where it becomes counterproductive, where It almost devalues the art itself. In this world that is going faster and faster, it’s becoming easy to think we can buy skills and mastery with money. As a musician, I see a lot of times situations where artists are rushed, barely having time to rehearse between concerts, arriving in the studio sight-reading, etc. I wish that earlier in education we’d learned how to manage time for ourselves.

Communication, in the broad sense of the term. I believe that everyone has his own way of communication but regardless you can be efficient and clear in whatever you’re trying to convey. That helps a lot, especially in the music field as it’s all about making your own network and connections as a freelancer among artists and creatives.

So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Creativity is something you work on daily. Someday you’ll feel not inspired, someday you’ll feel like you can write a full orchestral piece during the night. I find inspiration in books, daily life moments, and people’s stories, which helps me develop my creativity. Deadlines also help if you have to write a song or produce a beat with a date in the calendar. I find it easy to fall into the cycle of replicating something you’ve already done, which then gives you a tendency, a style. As a Kinesthetic, I learn by repetitively doing the same thing, and that helps me learn something while continuing to experiment with the same thing from different angles until I feel satisfied to move on. I also used to draw and paint as a kid and I think that being able to practice other forms of art is beneficial for creativity.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played an important role in your development?

Last year, I read the book “The Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin, which draws on his life experience as a chess master, tai chi pushing hands world champion, and book author. From championships to everyday life situations, he tells us about his successes and defeats in his process of learning new skills and adapting to unknown situations. I found his story particularly inspiring because besides being born with exceptional abilities, Josh is extremely mindful of how to approach learning in general, and he gives us concrete examples and practices we can all do consistently to deeply learn a new skill. I think that anyone can grab pieces of wisdom from this book, and unlock some fears of learning something new. Highly recommended!

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Image Credits
Image Credit: Jeriel Sanjurjo Andrew Choi Malik Lassoued

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