It has already been a few years since we have had the pleasure of collaborating with Geoffrey Secco. His concept of and approach to music is astonishing, and I wanted to share it with you. So, I asked him to tell us about his relationship with music, and his response is as follows:
«
In 1965, shaken by a trip to Hiroshima, legendary saxophonist John Coltrane released his cult album "A Love Supreme", creating concert-experiments with the aim of changing the world through love and trance. What would John Coltrane have done in our time? How would his concerts have evolved, and in what way would he connect with the audience?
That's the question every honest jazzman asks himself!
In an attempt to answer it, after working as a saxophonist in the 2000s with Pascal Obispo, Tito Puentes, and Charles Aznavour, in 2015, I created Hypnosis Concerts: an experience that allows audiences to enter a trance oriented towards self-knowledge.
I specify "oriented towards self-knowledge", because human beings, in our materialistic societies, mostly know trances oriented towards entertainment and ego-survival, generally induced by alcohol, drugs, sex, looped thoughts, mass manipulation, screens, social networks, etc. Human beings are in trance far more than we imagine. Some psychologists go so far as to think that we're in a permanent trance, and that hypnosis, rather than creating it, actually helps us get out of it! I wanted to propose a trance that would be enriching and exciting, that would take us out of our usual conditioning, inspired by positive psychology or the rituals of primitive peoples.
Indeed, trance and music have always been linked: From Whirling Dervishes to African sorcerers, from Gregorian chants to Amazonian Icaros, people have always sought transcendence and understanding of the world around them by expanding their consciousness.
In my life story, this association between music and dance began at a very early age: when I was 8, my sax teacher would talk to me about breathin and visualizing my next auditions to be better prepared for them. He would also tell me to imagine a "hot" sound that “projects 2km away, 360°." Metaphors, imagination, and visualization are the gateways to hypnosis. Without realizing it, I was introduced to self-hypnosis techniques, which I have used regularly in my personal life and in my profession: When I was 29, I was asked to join Patricia Kaas' clarinet tour, I learned to play the instrument in 15 days thanks to self-hypnosis.
I'd always wanted to create spiritual music, but the further I got into the music business, the less in tune I felt with that goal. When I played at the Stade de France with Yannick Noah, I realized that I couldn't do any better and that I had to do something different. I trained in Chinese medicine and energetics, went off to Australia to write an album on the Elements, and when I came back to do my first concerts, I saw that people were going into a trance. That's when I thought I could amplify the phenomenon and make it official: Why not openly offer concerts under hypnosis?
I searched the internet for references to "hypnosis concerts", just to get some inspiration. I couldn’t find anything, even in several languages. And yet, since the dawn of time, altered states of consciousness and music have been linked in many spiritual traditions. I was very surprised. Concerts under hypnosis didn't exist, so I went to the Amazon to meet what seems to me to be the source of this concept.
Cut off from the sacred, during these concerts, the audience closes its eyes and escapes into an inner world, like a great initiatory dream, guided by Ericksonian hypnosis and music.
Through playful hypnotic exercises, the audience gently plunges beyond their imagination, beliefs, and perceptions. They then explore a luminous world, where guides, connections, and absolutes are finally accessible.
On stage :
- Geoffrey Secco: Saxophone and hypnotist
- Mike Karagozian: Piano
- David Lombardi: Violin
- Kevin Reveyrand: Bass
- Nicolas Charlier: Drums
In the summer of 2015, I set off for Peru to meet French shaman, Jacques Mabit, at the Takiwasi Center to experience sacred plants and their age-old trances. This trip was decisive and gave me a clear vision of my project. On my return to France, I contacted my band and hypno-therapist Jean Doridot, and in October 2015 we improvised the first concert under hypnosis in Paris, with the theme of the 5 Elements, using my Australian music, in front of 120 people.
Since that first date, the concert hasn't stopped evolving: Jean Doridot alternated with other hypnotherapists (Fabien Malgrand, Kevin Finel), the music adapted, and I trained in hypnosis for two years at ARCHE (Kevin Finel's super training center). I learned a lot, and in 2017 I rewrote the concert, thinking of it as a great initiatory journey, inspired by Joseph Campbell's book "The Hero with 1001 Faces" and a hypnosis protocol (the SCORE). Since then, I've been guiding the experience on stage, and the concert is called LE VOYAGE DU HÉROS (THE HERO'S JOURNEY).
In 2020, after 3 incredible years and over 50 "Hero’s Journeys" in front of 15,000 people, I'm taking advantage of the confinements to write a new show on a theme that has fascinated me since adolescence: the afterlife.
When I was 14, I had read Bernard Werber's "The Thanatonautes", a science-fiction novel in which the last continent to be discovered is that of the Beyond, by provoking near-death experiences (NDEs), more or less controlled. When I read it, I had my first out-of-body experience (I talk a bit more about it in my book), and since then I've never been afraid of death, and it's given me great confidence in life.
Afterwards, I read up on NDEs, and the testimonies are often the same: unconditional love, transcendent messages, life mission, awareness, and confidence in life. I thought it was a shame to wait for a real NDE to enjoy such benefits! Also, the shamanic experiences I had in Peru were very similar to NDEs, taking me into that space where consciousness dissolves into Love and Knowledge. To be able to access it seems to me essential to our evolution, and I want to share these perceptions in a simple way.
So I wrote the show "Hereafter", inspired by various traditions and science, to accompany audiences through the symbolic stages of the afterlife. The concert was performed for the first time in Paris at the Trianon in February 2022, with special guest Bernard Werber opening the evening with a lecture on "The afterlife, as seen by science and different spiritualities.” It was a magical moment! Actress Cécile de France, who had starred in Clint Eastwood's film "Hereafter", did me the honor of counting herself among the audience!
"Geoffrey wrote the music for my most beautiful film, the film of my life," Cécile De France.
"It's like a guided dream with visualizations, Geoffrey is a modern shaman," Bernard Werber.
»
Thank you Geoffrey for taking us in your musical journey!
Geoffrey Secco plays a Syos tenor custom mouthpiece.
