Piano | 1962-1999

Michel Petrucciani was born in Orange, France on December 28, 1962, into an Italian family of working musicians: his father Antoine a jazz guitarist, his brothers Philippe on guitar and Louis on bass. He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition causing brittle bones and limited growth, and was unable to walk. His doctors said he would not survive past twenty. He saw Duke Ellington on television at four, switched from drums to piano, and spent his childhood practising up to ten hours a day. He was performing at local jazz festivals at thirteen and working with Kenny Clarke at fifteen. In 1982, at nineteen, he moved to California and persuaded saxophonist Charles Lloyd, then in retirement from music, to return to performing. They toured Europe and recorded together at Montreux. He moved to New York and signed first to Concord, where the solo album "100 Hearts" (1984) won France's Grand Prix du Disque, then to Blue Note, whose head Bruce Lundvall called him the owner of the greatest right hand he had ever heard. Seven Blue Note albums followed, including "Power of Three" (1986) with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall, and "Michel Plays Petrucciani" (1987). He received the Prix Django Reinhardt and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1994, aged thirty-one. He joked that he had outlasted Charlie Parker, who died at thirty-four. Petrucciani died at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan on January 6, 1999, aged thirty-six. He is buried at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, next to Chopin.