People usually don’t believe me when I say I spend much more time finding a suitable sitting than a piano before a performance. However, this is perfectly true. But that said, I’m not the only pianist claiming the bench is more important than the piano. When I was 14, I heard Samson François saying “I’d rather sit well at a bad piano, than sit poorly at a good one.” Of course he said this in a documentary film, I’m not old enough to have known him. I share his point of view now, but at this time, I just said to myself “What is this crazy guy talking about?”. Read more …

Yesterday, I have been going through my music bookshelves, digging for a piano concerto. I was looking for something really specific as it has to be something fitting the requirements of an emerging community orchestra and my practice schedule. My friend the conductor Jaemi Loeb initiated the project and created the Houston Heights Orchestra and I immediately offered her my help. Read more …

In the vein of my last post What is a musician supposed to look like?, I’ll tell you here an other story, but this time the story didn’t take place in a neutral environment but in a dressing room after a recital of mine, a long time ago (actually, at the very beginning of my career). I remember until today this old man who came to tell me how much he loved my playing, but he pursued with a very very strange question : “Are you going to move more when playing? You should show your passion by moving much more than you do, you know, like these pianists I see on TV.” This question might seem insignificant but it’s definitely not. The old man’s observation has often been sounding in my ears while thinking about my playing, and made me think a lot about my “style” as a pianist and what was really important while performing. It was a kind of butterfly effect: an insignificant question led to a complete theory about the kind of pianist I want to be. Read more …

Earlier this week, I was sitting on the terrace of a café, slowly drinking a cup of the black coffee I needed and enjoying the sun. The older man at the table next to me was alone too and started to chat with me. After a few minutes, he asked me what is my job. I thus answered I am a pianist and he instantly expressed his surprise saying, I quote, “I thought you work in a bank or insurance company, something like that. You don’t look like a pianist at all“. I didn’t take offense, even if I admit I hated him for a few seconds and thought that a guy working in one of these fields would certainly not be sitting on a terrace in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Anyway, it was not the first time someone told me this and I started a great thinking session about what is a musician supposed to look like and who I am. Read more …

Over this week-end, I had time to rest a bit and think. About what? About me, of course, and what I experienced during the last six months. For those who followed the story, I was wondering how to publish my first CD and wrote this post, and after friends made me change my mind a bit, I looked for and found several record labels happy to release this project. Hurray I said to myself, people to help me! But the artist-label relationship is much more complex than this. Read more …

Programming is a vast topic and lots of people wrote about it. Truth is I’m still experimenting, that’s not an easy task and there is no ready-made recipe. Over the years, I learnt a few things from my mistakes, and here are my 5 top advices about programming. Read more …

The classical musical world is nowadays obsessed with a new goal : Reaching new audiences. Everyone is giving his take on the subject, from playing in uncommon venues to playing with an unexpected outfit or a new concept of concerts as well as crossover concerts to reach a new audience. Well, my first question is : what’s wrong with the current audience? Read more …