My passion for ragtime music is recent although I have listened to it since a very early age because my father often listened to the famous movie soundtrack of "The Sting", featuring Scott JOPLIN's music.

     At age 5, despite my deafness, I started to attend music courses, initially with Laurent KATZ, a professional Be-Bop jazz piano player, and next at the conservatory.

     At that time, I wasn't interested in ragtime or even jazz. My music education is traditional, and my idols were (and still are) Johann-Sebastian BACH and Antonio VIVALDI. During my music education, I've been successively interested in other great composers, especially during my harmonical courses for their original harmonic progressions: Richard WAGNER, César FRANCK, and Max REGER.

     When an organist visited my primary school to speak about his passion and profession, he invited us to hear him play at his own Great Organ at the Jacques DECOUR lyceum chapel, in my home town, Paris. Since that time I've been interested in the "pope of the instruments" as Franz LISZT called the great organ. I completed my organ courses (with improvisation, composition, and accompaniment-related subjects) at 18 years old.

     After being titularized (made a church's head organist) at age 16 at the Saint-Jean BOSCO church in Paris, France, and worked also in another suburb catholic church, I discontinued my professional organ activities in 1999. Since January 2006, however, and even if I'm busy with other music activities, I'm organist at the little Paris-Béthanie protestant reformed church, where I enjoy to play, from time to time, to the religious services.

     My radical change from organ to ragtime piano occurred in 1999 after carefully listening to Scott JOPLIN's wonderful SOLACE - A Mexican Serenade on the Biograph LP recording of Hal BOULWARE's mechanically cut piano rolls. Although I was previously familiar with this piece, I credit this recording with turning my attention to ragtime.

     Since then, I have been searching for ragtime information, books, and documents. I knew that ragtime was not limited to JOPLIN's output, so I quickly found a variety of ragtime scores, my first being the well-known Dover reprints, in addition to the excellent Vera BRODSKY SCOTT JOPLIN'S COMPLETE PIANO WORKS book.

     I have seriously studied since 1999. My contact with French traditional jazz pianists and my research regarding French ragtime's historical development, as well as contemporary French ragtime artists, have led me to build this website.

     The Internet is a bonanza for all who are interested in Ragtime music, and it has permitted me to find my first contacts which eventually led me to perform my very first Ragtime piano concerts here in France.

     I'm young, so I never had the opportunity to meet the great American Jazz giants. However, France is known as another Jazz country (maybe the very first after the U.S.A) and many Jazz greats lived and/or played here. So I've been lucky to meet some real French Jazz fans, as well as some Americans, who were friends with (or at least met briefly) the greatest Jazz artists of all times: Duke ELLINGTON, Willie "the Lion" SMITH, Eubie BLAKE, "Fats" WALLER, Jelly Roll MORTON, Pete JOHNSON. My Boogie friend personnally know the only French pupil of Pete JOHNSON, and he owns original letters and pictures of his idol; he was also acquainted with the stride giant Joe TURNER who lived, until his death, in a small town near Paris !

     Among my others music passions, I particularly love the Cistercian and Gregorian chant, (which I have studied three consecutive years under the direction of Philippe LENOBLE, Choir Director of Le Mans Cathedral), theatre and church pipe organs, classic jazz, the other classical music mistakenly known as "light salon music" and the famous piano roll recordings both in the popular music (ragtime, Broadway Jazz, pop songs of the Roaring Twenties) and Classical genre with the wonderful recordings of my favorite pianists : Ignaz Jan PADEREWSKY, Ignaz FRIEDMAN, Harold BAUER, Ethel LEGINSKA, and my favorite Classical piano artist, Josef HOFMANN.

     For the jazz/popular preferences, I'm continually flabbergasted by the outstanding arrangement and playing of piano roll artists Adam CARROLL, Phil OHMAN, J. Lawrence COOK, John Milton DELCAMP, Edward "Zez" CONFREY, and my very first favorite, Pauline ALPERT (1900 - 1988).

     Now I'm completely devoted to Ragtime and Trad Jazz here in my native town of Paris where I enjoy composing contemporary Ragtime and play regularly for various events. I'd like also to mention here that it is a pride for me that two contemporary Ragtime works are dedicated to me: "Peut-Etre", (Gilles Monfort 2001) and "Parisian Rag", (Dénes Dosztán 2002). Moreover, thanks to the help of my father Christian, this www.ragtime-france.net website specifically dedicated to French Ragtime is present on the internet since winter 2000.

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Site créé le 26/08/00
Dernière mise à jour le 20/01/08
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