Born in 1960, Erik Truffaz grew up in the Gex area of France, same stomping grounds as French writer and philosopher Voltaire.At the early age of 8, he discovered the joy of being on stage beside his father who played the saxophone.At 14, he electrified his trumpet and bought a wha wha pedal. He spent hours rehearsing with friends in a dark but promising basement.Then Erik Truffaz watched the movie scenes from a Marriage by Bergman and discovered that life was not as simple as he had imagined.In 1978, he particularly enjoyed washing the dishes to the sound of Ornette Coleman.In 1987, he played in Montreux with the Brazilian band Cruseiro do sul, together with Benoit Corboz and Hugo Fatoruso on the keyboards, and then flew to New York.He received the jury award at the Défense de la ville de Paris contest in 1993 and then signed on with the Blue Note label in 1996.Between 1996 and 2008, 12 albums were to be released under this famous label, 4 of them composed and recorded with the Truffaz Quartet (Marcello Giuliani, Patrick Muller,Marc Erbetta): The dawn, Bending new corners, The walk of the giant turtle, Arckhangelsk, with guests such as the hip hop poet Nya, and singers Ed Harcourt and Christophe.He set up the Ladyland Quartet with Michel Bénita, Manu Codjia, Philippe Garcia and the singer Mounir Troudi in 2001. Anouar Brahem, master of space, was invited to perform a duet during the recording of the first album of the band, Mantis.As early as 2003, Erik Truffaz had the privilege of playing with the Harald Hearter Band, with Joe Lovano, Dewey Redman, Chris Potter, Mickaël Breacker who declared during an interview with the German newspaper Jazzthing that he was one of the top 3 trumpet players with whom he preferred playing, the other two being Roy Hargrove and Randy Breacker.The Cité de la musique of Paris commissioned him in 2004 to compose a soundtrack for a movie to be played live during the screening. He chose I Was Born, But…, a movie by Ozu, for its freshness and its contemporaneousness. The Ladyland Quartet played this piece of music.In 2005, Erik Truffaz was invited by his mentor John Hassell to play at the Montreal festival. He was taken aback by his kindness, his sense of space and the quality of his sound!The Ladyland Quartet performed a series of concerts in Paris with Michel Portal and Julien Lourau as guests.2006 was a hard-working year. He composed a play for the National Orchestra of Lilles for which he performed as soloist.During the second part of the evening, he played duets with both Richard Galliano and Didier Lockwood.In addition, he regularly goes into battle with Pierre Henry, founder of electro –acoustic music.Together with the pianist Malcolm Braff, and with Indrani and Apurba Mukherjee, he moved to India, which led to the Benares album. He also took part in the Ecritures de concert project with Malcolm Braff and the poet Joël Bastard.He rubbed shoulders with Murcof, a tireless craftsman, and Talvin Singh joined them to create minimalist and contrasting music.2008 was a fertile year with the release of 3 albums: Benares, recorded in Kolkata, Paris in duet with Sly Johnson and Mexico, resulting from musical ping pong between himself and Murcof.