Album Notes

Gifted from young age, Jean-Michel Damase was only nine years old when Colette wrote three poems for him for which he composed their music.

He studied music under the personal direction of Alfred Cortot and, by the time he was fifteen years old he received, by unanimity, the First Prize for Piano of the National Conservatory of Paris. Four years later he obtained the First Prize in Composition from the same musical institution. Soon after, he received the first Prize of Rome. He was just nineteen years old!

He has been invited often to interpret his own compositions and to give master classes during festivals in Europe, the United States and Japan.

Being the son of Micheline Kahn,for whom had composed harp pieces Fauré, Ravel and Caplet, Jean-Michel Damase has also written several compositions for this instrument.

For his lifetime work, Jean-Michel Damase received the Musical Grand Prize of SACD, the French Society of Drama Authors and Composers, and the Grand Prize of the City of Paris. Damase has a fluid and easy writing, a style that charms with lightness and ease, even though renewing its inspiration is challenging.

Fond of grace in melody and of refined orchestration, he has proved to be a composer in his own league, while keeping an attachment to tonality and establishing himself as an heir to the classical traditions of French music.