Jean-Michel Damase

Jean -Michel Damase ( born January 27, 1928 in Bordeaux, Gironde, † April 21, 2013 ) was a French composer and pianist.

Life and work

The son of the harpist Micheline Kahn already from the age of five lessons in solfeggio and piano with Marcel Samuel -Rousseau. At the age of nine he began to compose. Colette, had heard a friend of his mother, the songs he wrote for him three Poèmes d' animaux. As a twelve year old student of Alfred Cortot was Damase at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, in the following year he joined the piano class Armand Fertés at the Paris Conservatoire and won in 1943 the first prize in piano.

From 1945 he studied at the Conservatoire composition with Henri Busser and counterpoint with Marcel Dupré. In 1947 he won the first prize in composition at the Conservatoire, and with the cantata Et la Belle se réveilla the Prix de Rome.

In parallel, Damase began a successful career as a pianist. He appeared as a soloist at the Concerts Colonne and the Concerts du Conservatoire and with the Orchestre National de la Radio et Télévision Française diffusion. He played a number of works Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel, and was awarded for his recordings with the Grand Prix du Disque. After the global performing as a concert pianist, he later turned to composition and teaching. He taught at the Ecole Normal de Musique in Paris and gave master classes in Europe, the USA and Japan and was awarded the Grand Prix Musical de la SACD ( Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques ) and the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris.

Damases extensive compositional works include operas, ballets and film scores, chamber music, concertos, pieces for solo instruments as well as vocal music.

Jean -Michel Damase died on April 21, 2013 at the age of 85 years. His grave is in the cemetery of Valmondois ( Département Val -d'Oise ).