Collection: François Jeanneau

François Jeanneau was born in Paris in 1935, studied flute at the Paris Conservatory under René Leroy, earned a musicology teaching diploma at university in 1977, and taught himself saxophone because the music he wanted to play required it. He began playing professionally in 1960 at the Club Saint-Germain, worked in Jef Gilson's big band and in a sextet with pianist François Tusques before the free jazz wave that reshaped French jazz in the mid-1960s pulled him toward more experimental territory. His 1965 recording with Tusques, Michel Portal and Bernard Vitet on "Free Jazz" is among the earliest documents of French free jazz. The band Triangle, which he joined in the late 1960s, developed a jazz-rock fusion approach; the trio he formed with drummer Daniel Humair and bassist Henri Texier at the end of the 1970s moved back toward post-bop and open improvisation. Together the three recorded "Humair Jeanneau Texier" (Owl, 1979) and "Akagera" (JMS, 1980), and continued working together with updates through the Label Bleu years. His solo Owl albums, "Techniques Douces" (1976) and "Ephémère" (1977), document his most searching individual work. He won the Prix Django Reinhardt from the Académie du Jazz in 1980 and was appointed the founding director of the Orchestre National de Jazz in 1986, the first leader of France's state-funded national jazz orchestra. He composed for film and television alongside his performing career, wrote for the saxophone quartet Le Quatuor des Saxophones, and continued recording into the 2000s. He is still active, aged 90.