Zaz Net Worth

Biography

Zaz is the stage name of Isabelle Geffroy, a talented and non-standard French singer performing in mixed genres of pop song, jazz, chanson, and acoustic music. Her original voice is compared with the voices of Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, Freel.

Zaz’s debut album became double platinum, and the performer herself was awarded many different awards, including the prestigious Constantin Prize (Prix Constantin) and the Charles Cros Academy Prize in the Opening Song nomination. In 2019, Zaz visited Moscow and St. Petersburg with concerts.

Childhood and youth

The girl, born in the spring of 1980 in the French city of Tours, was named Isabelle by her parents. My father worked for an energy-saving company, and my mother taught Spanish at school. The baby became the third child in the family, she has an older sister and brother.

Barely active and restless Isabelle learned to walk and talk, she told her parents that as soon as she grew up, she would definitely become a singer. To find a way out for the seething energy of the youngest daughter, mom and dad decided to enroll her in a music school attended by older children. From the age of five to eleven, the girl, with all possible diligence, went to choral singing classes, learned to play the violin, piano and guitar, even the dull solfeggio did not cause her protest.

Everything changed when Isabelle had to go to a comprehensive school. Freedom-loving and independent, she defended her right to neglect compulsory subjects, but with all the passion of her nature she took part in all school concerts. Teachers already then noted the power of her voice and the emotional richness of the performed compositions.

Isabelle was nine years old when her parents divorced. Music lessons had to be postponed for a while, as she and her mother moved to Bordeaux and settled in a new place. To begin with, the girl signed up for kung fu classes and, together with a mentor, honed her fighting skills for a year. Then her mother found vocal courses for her, which Isabelle began to attend with pleasure. But mediocre studies at school infuriated not only the fifteen-year-old singer, but also the teachers, who, after conferring, decided to leave the negligent student for the second year.

I didn’t feel too comfortable. And the music saved me, I was able to direct all the energy that I could hardly control into it.

It was not in the nature of the future star to repeatedly go through hated subjects that did not arouse enthusiasm in her from the first time. Telling herself that she had already lost too much time with this school, Isabelle dropped out and moved away from her mother’s care. She went to her older sister, where, in order not to sit on the neck of a relative, she got a job in the nearest restaurant to wash dishes, and then moved to the waitress.

At the same time, the girl was looking for ways to show her talent as a singer, and when the regional council of Bordeaux at the beginning of the new millennium allocated a CIAM scholarship for her, she immediately entered the Center for Information and Musical Activities.

Creative takeoff

In 2001, Isabelle became the soloist of the Fifty Fingers blues band, but did not limit herself only to this collaboration, trying her hand at different genres and with different bands. The longest was the creative collaboration of Geffroy with the Basque group “Izar – Adatz”, in which twelve musicians played and four soloists sang. Together they traveled all over Spain, visited the Basque country and Portugal. Isabelle revealed all the new facets of her own talent, performing rock, blues, jazz, chanson.

It was the versatility and bold mixing of styles that led to the birth of the pseudonym Zaz (from Z to A and from A to Z).

Since then, Isabelle prefers to be called Zaz rather than Madame Geffroy, since in French her last name sounds very similar to the phrase “I’m cold” [Geffroy – J’ai froid, прим. uznayvse.ru]

Then the singer began to sign with the Latin letter “Z”, her first such “autograph” appeared on a contract with the Don Diego team, which Zaz still speaks of with warmth. When it seemed to the girl that she lacked space, she decided without hesitation to go to Paris to sing there.

At first she performed in small clubs and cabarets (for example, for a year and a half she performed every evening at the Three Hammers club), where they paid good money, but this was not enough for her to consider herself a singer. “It was insanely boring, I went to work like hard labor,” the singer recalled. Tired of smoky cramped rooms and a cheeky audience, she went out to sing on the streets of Montmartre.

Isabelle posted her work on the MySpace website, where she was found by producer Kereddin Soltani. He invited the girl to record an album for her and in 2008 composed the song “Je veux” (“I want”), which in just a couple of years became a worldwide hit. “Amazingly, with this song he expressed everything that I wanted to say,” says Zaz. The song says that material values ​​do not matter, and the main thing in life is love, good mood and a pure soul. After the song hit YouTube, Zaz was talked about, but world fame was still far away. During this period, the Singer collaborates with groups of rap artists Le4P and Miliaouech. In parallel with this, Soltani organized a tour for her, during which the singer first met Russian, Japanese, Egyptian audiences.

Then the Frenchwoman became a participant and winner of the Le Tremplin Generation France Bleu competition and received a prize in the form of an opportunity to record a solo album and a video clip.

It was 2009. Zaz is called the second Piaf, they admire her manner of performance, brightness and eccentricity of her personality. Fans were looking forward to the release of her first album, which appeared only a year later. In 2010, the songs of the singer’s debut album exploded on the music charts, which she called “ZAZ”. It included songs authored by Zaz herself, three compositions by Rafael, who offered cooperation, and, of course, “Je veux” by Kereddine Soltani – this composition became the first single from the new album.

The artist went on a world tour, which began in France, and then continued in Austria, Germany, Canada. Almost half a million copies of the ZAZ album were sold. At the same time, the artist remained the same sincere, simple and far from glamour. An example is her apartment in Paris, which is completely alien to pretentiousness and luxury. Isabelle does not like secular gloss and in fashionable places she feels out of place.

Light is easier to follow the wind To be happy, you need quite a bit, believe me. I really hope that my songs will help people realize this.

The French recognized the singer as “the best artist of 2010”, she was awarded several prestigious prizes and awards. The next two years, Zaz toured, arranged charity concerts.

In particular, the audience remembered a large-scale performance in support of the victims of the Fukushima accident. The concerts featured immortal hits by Mireille Mathieu, Charles Aznavour, Patricia Kaas, as well as original works. The new compositions that she performed were soon included in the artist’s next album, Recto Verso, which was released in 2013. The Europeans warmly welcomed the second record of Zaz.

A year later, the disc “Paris” appeared, and 2018 was marked by the album “Effet Miroir”, in support of which Zaz resumed touring with a new band and began them in her beloved and mysterious Russia.

Zaz’s personal life

Just private space – the territory that Isabelle does not let strangers into. She laughs it off when asked about the pregnancy, vaguely reports that she is not alone, but does not intend to discuss this. But still, once the singer was married, which she let slip during her tour of Colombia:

Now I’m divorced. But she was married to the gentlest of men, a Colombian. I met him in Paris, then I went to Colombia, met his family, we got married there … It was just crazy, and I have always done crazy things in my life.

Another adventure that Isabelle loves so much did not last long. Despite the ardor and tenderness of the man, the singer understood that their mentality was completely different, and besides, she was not ready for the role of wife and mother. Having filed for divorce, Zaz exhaled freely and plunged into music with even greater zeal.

The singer opposes children’s vocal competitions. In 2014, they wanted to invite her as a mentor to the French version of the Voice. Children,” but she refused: “I hate it when children are exploited.”

Singer Zaz now

2019 for the singer became a new acquaintance with the Russian audience in Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, St. Petersburg. In winter, her solo concert for Muscovites took place, and before that, Zaz appeared in Evening Urgant on Channel One.

The girl has mutual love with fans from Russia, for whom she performed live Que Vendra, Demain c, estotti, Les passants, and also had a nice conversation with the hosts of the television show.

I was very much expected. There was a crazy energy in the hall. Their eyes sparkled. They gave me a lot of love, sang songs with me by heart.

The singer is also seriously involved in charity work. Her non-profit project called “Zazimuth” aims to bring together various charitable organizations around the world. For example, in Russia, the project of a Frenchwoman is supported by the Vykhod Foundation and the Anton Is Right Here Charitable Center. In August, Zaz came to Russia again, this time to participate in the second environmental festival Zavtra.

Zazimut was joined by the St. Petersburg organization Nochlezhka, which has long been helping people left on the street without a roof over their heads. A branch of Nochlezhka was also opened in Moscow. In 2019, Zavtra became a sister festival to the Crussol Festival, which is organized by the singer and her companions and has been held since 2017.

In one of the interviews, when asked if the singer was thinking of ending her musical career and showing herself, for example, in cinema, Isabelle Geffroy admitted that she had been dreaming about it for a long time. But she is sure that for this she will not need to part with music and she will perfectly succeed in combining filming, musical and social activities.

And if Zaz is still going to start a family, then love and harmony must be present in it, otherwise it makes no sense to link her fate with a man, this extraordinary, talented and sincere woman believes.