Jacques Loussier
Musician whose jazz interpretations of Bach and other classical composers sold millions of albums
JACQUES LOUSSIER, who has died aged 84, was a conservatoire-trained French pianist who caused a sensation in 1959 when he established a trio with the string bass player Pierre Michelot and the drummer Christian Garros and recorded his sophisticated jazzed-up interpretations of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
The combination of Bach’s elegant contrapuntal melodies with jazz swing had instant commercial appeal. Play Bach No 1 proved a runaway hit and two follow-up releases were equally popular. A subsequent European concert tour was so successful that the Jacques Loussier Trio continued to tour for 15 years, during which they sold more than 6 million albums.
In Britain, Loussier’s take on Bach’s Air on a G String, first heard on Play Bach No 2 (1960), became familiar as the soundtrack for the long-running “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet” television commercials that were regularly voted the most enjoyable ads by viewers from their launch in 1962 until tobacco advertising on television was banned in 1991.
Later on, with a new trio, Loussier went on to pen his own variations of Vivaldi, Handel, Debussy, Satie, Chopin and Ravel. He also played with Romanian gipsy orchestras and composed and recorded a mass with the English countertenor, James Bowman.
Yet though his versions of the classics continued to pack out concert halls Loussier was never really accepted by either the jazz or the classical world, which regarded tinkering with the works of the great composers as sacrilege. The standard reference works allotted few, if any, lines to him.
Loussier, however, responded to his critics’ determination to ignore his existence with a Gallic shrug, summing up his philosophy in 2002 with a culinary metaphor: “If you don’t like it, you are not obliged to eat it.”
Jacques Loussier was born in Angers, France, on October 26 1934 and discovered Bach at the age of 11 when learning to play the piano: “The first piece I came across was the Prelude in G minor. I simply fell in love with this piece. I played it 100 times or so. Then one day, I started to change the melody, then the left-hand harmonies. It was a natural instinct.” At the age of just 16 he entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique in Paris, where he studied under Yves Nat, becoming his star pupil. After leaving the Conservatoire, however, finding the classical music world overcrowded, and needing to earn a living, he began working as an accompanist with the cabaret artist, Catherine Sauvage, and the singer, Charles Aznavour.
After service in the French Army, and inspired by the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet, whose pianist, John Lewis, borrowed devices from the classical canon and incorporated them into the jazz idiom, Loussier conceived the idea of using his skill for improvisation with bass and drums and creating a trio playing the music of Bach.
As well as several albums – all entitled Play Bach – the Jacques Loussier Trio recorded some of Loussier’s arrangements of Bach’s concerti with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. However, the strain of touring and giving more than 150 concerts per year eventually began to tell and in 1978 the trio disbanded.
In 1980 Loussier retired to Provence to compose and record.
He had already done some film music composition, and had established his own recording studio at Miraval, near Nice, where, in addition to composing his own pieces for acoustic and electronic instruments, he played host to stars including Elton John, Sting, Yes and Pink Floyd, who recorded some of their album, The Wall, there.
In 1984, in time for Bach’s 300th birthday the following year, he created a new Jacques Loussier Trio with the percussionist André Arpino and double bassist Vincent Charbonnier (later replaced by Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac), and set off touring and recording again.
Though the trio remained best known for their riffs on JS Bach (in 2000, for the first time, they gave the monumental Goldberg Variations a Jacques Loussier makeover), they also tackled works by other composers, including Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Ravel’s Bolero, Handel’s Fireworks and Water Music and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
At the same time Loussier left room in his schedule to write his own compositions. These included suites for piano, synthesisers, percussion and bass, and rock-jazz-classical fusion works. In 1986 he produced a mass entitled Lumières, his first full-scale work for symphony orchestra, which premiered in Paris with the classical countertenor James Bowman and soprano Deborah Rees singing alongside a rock drummer.
Other compositions include Nympheas, a set of variations based on Monet’s paintings of water lilies, a suite for strings, Tableaux Vénitiens, and a ballet, Trois Couleurs (1989), written to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution.
Jacques Loussier is survived by his wife Elizabeth, with whom he had five children.