Steven William Derendinger (- Gallavin) was born on the 27th September 1975 in Sierre. Swiss and British, he grew up in Lausanne where he studied at the University of Lausanne and was graduated with a Master of Arts (MA). He began to sing as an autodidact and took part in different local musical productions. He formed the jazz band "Late Nights" in 1999 with which he performed in different venues such as the Cully Jazz Festival. He recorded previously in 1996 a demo album with seven orig...

Steven William Derendinger (- Gallavin) was born on the 27th September 1975 in Sierre. Swiss and British, he grew up in Lausanne where he studied at the University of Lausanne and was graduated with a Master of Arts (MA). He began to sing as an autodidact and took part in different local musical productions. He formed the jazz band "Late Nights" in 1999 with which he performed in different venues such as the Cully Jazz Festival. He recorded previously in 1996 a demo album with seven original songs with his band "Mind the Sun."

In parallel, Steven committed as a volunteer for the LGBT rights where he worked from August 2004 until March 2010 as president of the Association VoGay in the canton Vaud. He appeared formerly in the publication of Stéphane Riethauser, "A visage découvert". In 2003, Steven worked on “the linguistic insecurity and imagination of gay men in western Switzerland” for his final academic paper. This paper was published twice. (Michael Groneberg, « L’homme – créature sexuelle », 2006, et Christophe Bareille, « Homosexualité : révélateur social ? », 2010).

Beside his associative commitments, Steven worked on the promotion of gay men’s health. In April 2005, he began his career as a scientist collaborator in the AIDS unit of the Federal Office of Public Health in Bern, where he became project manager for HIV prevention among gay men and male prostitution in Switzerland. Meanwhile, Steven never left his musical activities and defined in 2008 the project Mad about the Boy, which he produced independently in 2009, and released in 2010.

For Steven, this debut album articulates one decade of involvement for the LGBT rights and the promotion of gay men’s health with his solo career as an independent jazz singer under the name of Gallavin.

With the album Mad about the Boy, Gallavin places himself beyond the stereotypes of “Crooner or Diva” in jazz. Through his interpretation, Gallavin gives to some of the greatest jazz standard songs their original essence back. Noël Coward’s song Mad about the Boy – mostly known for Dinah Washington’s interpretation – was written, for instance, for his long term lover, Graham Payn, a South African actor. Cole Porter - authors of the most known American vocal jazz songs – was also homosexual. The consideration of his homosexuality opens then new fields of interpretations of his work.

Gallavin offers with Mad about the Boy, an intimate and sometimes fragile album. Orchestrated by Pierre Sottas, the album is open to all vocal jazz lovers regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.