My childhood was in Finistère, a country in which dreams begin where the land ends: that gave me a longing to travel. Then, when I'd been to Africa, the Finistère raindrops pattered down more dreams of departure, encouraged by the novels of Jack London, the music of Vangelis, Los Calchakis, Higelin - and piano lessons that helped me to paint blue notes all over my universe.
I studied in Germany. Then, at 24, I spent two years at the CIM in Paris, taught by the organist Emannuel Bex. Back in Montpellier, where I'd been a teenager, I joined the jazz school "J.A.M", where I travelled all over France in the tour 'Format Scene', finishing with a concert at the Duc des Lombards. All this encouraged me to join Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1999. And since even Boston was not cold enough for me, I then decided to leave for Sweden where i got a job playing piano in a bar (In fact I almost was the bar, since the local students used to come and hang over me with their plates, using the piano as a table) . It was better being pianist for the Big Band of Local Radio Uppsala - fewer crumbs. But Sweden is a quiet place , except on a Friday night when the grandmas bring out their bottles of vodka on Friday night. It was in France that my diary as an 'intermittent de spectacle' filled up - accompanying French songs, visiting out-of-the-way jazz clubs with the guitarist David Dimbert. At JAM I was the accompanist for Pascale Labbe's singing courses, the silent witness of regular crises of stagefright before concerts. Then a course at M.A.O. in Toulouse – and another in teaching children by the Oswin Haas piano method.
Then I found myself missing Britanny, so back I went to the cliffs of Rose Granite to give weekly jazz concerts at the Manoir de Lan Kerellec with the bassist Nicolas Besnerais. It was an elegant hotel with the social order perfectly preserved, rather like being in a novel by Agatha Christie. I used to look at the clients and wonder: which one of them did it?
After another course at Eric Le Lann's E.C.M, where my teacher was Cesarius Alvim, Nicolas and I started a jazz trio 'Doree Bababes" whose style brought together gwenogenns and the conga sound of Bruno Babalonne. That was until i found myself in Mexico City, marrying a Mexican girl on the Zocalo, the main square.
In Mexico I've taught the piano and binged on my attempts to bring a jazz style to the classics - after all, Mozart was a great improviser. And Mexico is a land of strange contrasts, with Indians in feathers dancing to techno. I take the bike to give my piano lessons - it's thrilling dodging the cars - makes you feel like a torero. That's the voice of childhood: because I've left the kid in me a key so that he can get back into my life and paint it up with fantasy. He's also got the key to the cupboard in which I've installed my home studio. The music I want to present is made first and foremost for grownup children - little ones too, if you like - but there must be something of a child's excitement in there somewhere.
© Baby Bidou 2012
