Lyon

Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and... known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks. Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents, and trained on the piano. From an early age he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including those of street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages. He played guitar in a band, but his musical style was perhaps most heavily influenced by Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène. Recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album sold an estimated 12 million copies. Oxygène was followed in 1978 by Équinoxe, and in 1979 Jarre performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde, a record he has since broken three times. More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his future performances around the world.
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Maurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor. Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is... particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia . Other notable scores include The Train , Mohammad, Messenger of God , Witness and Ghost . Jarre was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Three of his compositions spent a total of forty-two weeks on the U.K. singles chart chart; the biggest hit was 'Somewhere My Love' by the Michael Sammes Singers, which reached number fourteen in 1966 and spent thirty-eight weeks on the chart. Jarre was a three time Academy Award winner, for Lawrence of Arabia , Doctor Zhivago , and A Passage to India , all of which were directed by David Lean. He was Oscar nominated a total of eight times. His son is the electronic composer Jean Michel Jarre.
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Marie-France Gaîté , better known as Gribouille, was a singer. As a teenager, she suffered from mental disorder and for a time was confined... against her will to a psychiatric hospital in Lyon. With medication, she was able to function well enough to leave her hometown and moved on to Paris. There, she met Jean Cocteau who got her work singing in a cabaret. Composer Michel Breuzard wrote songs for her, and in 1966 she recorded several 45 rpm records and an album. She died in Paris, France, of mixing alcohol and medications, at the age of 26. She was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux in Montrouge, near Paris.
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Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a French pianist. He was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with... Maria Curcio. In 1973, he was awarded the chamber music prize of the Paris Conservatoire. In the same year, he won the first prize at the international Olivier Messiaen Competition. In 1977, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he became a founding member of the Ensemble InterContemporain. He made his American debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of twenty, performing the piano solo part in Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie. Aimard is particularly committed to contemporary music. He was the soloist in several premieres of works such as Répons by Pierre Boulez, Klavierstück XIV by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the eleventh and thirteenth piano études of György Ligeti. One of his most notable recordings is that of the first two books of Ligeti's piano études. He has also performed the work of contemporary composers such as George Benjamin and Marco Stroppa. Aimard was one of Carnegie Hall's "Perspectives" artists for the 2006-2007 concert season, where he programmed his own series of concerts.
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Jacques Pépin is an internationally recognized French chef, television personality, and author working in the United States. At the end of the... 1980s and the start of the 1990s, he appeared on French and American T.V. and wrote an array of cookbooks that became best sellers. Pépin, the second of three sons, was born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, near Lyon in France. After World War II, his parents, Jeanne and Jean-Victor Pépin, owned the restaurant, Le Pelican, where Pépin worked and later became known for his love for food. He went on to work in Paris, training under Lucien Diat at the Plaza Athénée. From 1956 to 1958, Pépin was the personal chef to three French heads of state, including Charles de Gaulle. In 1959 Pépin came to the United States to work at the restaurant Le Pavillon. Eight months later, In 1961, Howard Johnson, a regular Le Pavillon customer, hired Pépin to work along side fellow Frenchman Pierre Franey to develop food lines for his chain of Howard Johnson's restaurants, while Pépin was attending Columbia University. Pépin received his B.A.
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Bernard Pivot, OC, CQ is a journalist, interviewer and host of French cultural television programmes. He is a member of the Académie Goncourt.... Pivot was born in Lyon, the son of grocers. During World War II, his father, Charles Pivot, was taken prisoner and his mother moved to the family home to the village of Quincié-en-Beaujolais, where Bernard Pivot started school. In 1945 his father was released, and the reunited family returned to Lyon. At age 10, Pivot went to a Catholic boarding school and discovered a consuming passion for sport, a passion which helped teachers to overlook his general mediocrity in all traditional school subjects except French language and history. After starting studies in law in Lyon, Pivot entered the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris, where he met his future wife, Monique. He graduated second in his class. After an internship at "Le progrès" in Lyon, he studied economic journalism for a full year, then joined the Figaro littéraire in 1958. In 1970, he hosted a daily humorous radio programme that often raised political issues, which was not appreciated by Georges Pompidou.
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Maurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor. Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is... particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia . Other notable scores include The Train , Mohammad, Messenger of God , Witness and Ghost . Jarre was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Three of his compositions spent a total of forty-two weeks on the U.K. singles chart chart; the biggest hit was 'Somewhere My Love' by the Michael Sammes Singers, which reached number fourteen in 1966 and spent thirty-eight weeks on the chart. Jarre was a three time Academy Award winner, for Lawrence of Arabia , Doctor Zhivago , and A Passage to India , all of which were directed by David Lean. He was Oscar nominated a total of eight times. His son is the electronic composer Jean Michel Jarre.
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Alexandre Clément Léon Joseph Luigini was a French composer and conductor, especially active in the opera house. As as composer, he is now... remembered almost solely for his Ballet égyptien. Luigini was born in Lyon in 1850. His grandparents had moved to Lyon from Modena, Italy, when his grandfather took up the post of trumpeter with the orchestra of the Grand Théâtre. Alexandre Luigini was brought up with music, his father Joseph also playing with, and later conducting, the orchestra of the Grand Théâtre. He was the nephew of César and Alexandre Luigini, both noted instrumentalists. After studying at the Conservatoire in Paris where he gained a second prize for violin, Luigini returned to Lyon and from 1872 played as a violinist in the theatre orchestra, which he went on to lead, becoming conductor in 1877. As resident conductor he was also expected to meet the compositional demands of the theatre, leading to a number of ballets, operas and orchestral suites. In 1897 he left Lyon to take up the conductorship of the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and led a busy life until his sudden death there in 1906.
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Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a French pianist. He was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with... Maria Curcio. In 1973, he was awarded the chamber music prize of the Paris Conservatoire. In the same year, he won the first prize at the international Olivier Messiaen Competition. In 1977, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he became a founding member of the Ensemble InterContemporain. He made his American debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of twenty, performing the piano solo part in Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie. Aimard is particularly committed to contemporary music. He was the soloist in several premieres of works such as Répons by Pierre Boulez, Klavierstück XIV by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the eleventh and thirteenth piano études of György Ligeti. One of his most notable recordings is that of the first two books of Ligeti's piano études. He has also performed the work of contemporary composers such as George Benjamin and Marco Stroppa. Aimard was one of Carnegie Hall's "Perspectives" artists for the 2006-2007 concert season, where he programmed his own series of concerts.
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Bernard Pivot, OC, CQ is a journalist, interviewer and host of French cultural television programmes. He is a member of the Académie Goncourt.... Pivot was born in Lyon, the son of grocers. During World War II, his father, Charles Pivot, was taken prisoner and his mother moved to the family home to the village of Quincié-en-Beaujolais, where Bernard Pivot started school. In 1945 his father was released, and the reunited family returned to Lyon. At age 10, Pivot went to a Catholic boarding school and discovered a consuming passion for sport, a passion which helped teachers to overlook his general mediocrity in all traditional school subjects except French language and history. After starting studies in law in Lyon, Pivot entered the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris, where he met his future wife, Monique. He graduated second in his class. After an internship at "Le progrès" in Lyon, he studied economic journalism for a full year, then joined the Figaro littéraire in 1958. In 1970, he hosted a daily humorous radio programme that often raised political issues, which was not appreciated by Georges Pompidou.
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Michel Colombier was a French composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor.

Salim Kechiouche is a French actor. While only 15 years old, he was first discovered by French actor director Gaël Morel. Morel gave him his... first role in a feature film, À Toute Vitesse , released in 1996. Since then, Kechiouche has acted in most of Morel's works including Premières Neiges in 1999, Le Clan in 2004 and Après Lui . While working with Gaël Morel Kechiouche developed his passion for acting, which he decided to make his career. He entered acting school and graduated in 2002. Salim Kechiouche now lives in Paris, dividing his time between cinema and the stage. In addition to Morel, Kechiouche has worked with other French directors such as François Ozon, as well as with non-French directors. In 2003, Kechiouche played the role of Karim in Gigolo, directed by German director Bastian Schweitzer, opposite Amanda Lear. Kechiouche played a self-destructive gigolo trying to get his life back on track in the jet-set world of Paris. The film was nominated for a Golden Bear Award in the Best Short Film category at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.
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