Monsieur Gontrand was born late, at an age when you no longer ask questions about the meaning of life. You no longer ask, either because you’ve found it, or you’ve understood. Words and notes had always crowded the horizons of his imagination, but several trial flights were needed before his final launch…
Backstage to a noteworthy career in the musical press (for ten years as a journalist on Keyboard and the impassioned editor of Home Studio), behind the scenes of his role as head of an inventive and artful enterprise (he set up his own Web agency), like a compass music has always been there.
To begin with, he composed the original soundtrack of a short movie sponsored by Lelouch in the ’eighties. Now known as a composer, he was helped by Jean-Louis Foulquier who broadcast one of his arrangements on the radio. Comforted by what his familiars then thought of as a hobby or an amusing pastime, he activated his network and surrounded himself with the best (Pierre Jacquot at the console, Pierre Jaconelli on the guitar) to record a couple of songs. The miracle happened. Words give the notes a story, the notes provide the words with music. He thus joins the ranks of people like Benjamin Biolay, Vincent Delerm and others, including Renan Luce, the new generation of French singers, and records an album in 1999: “24 heures à ses côtés” (on Archipel Studios label), in which sweetness and authenticity vie with emotion. With Claude Salmiéri, Michel Berger’s, France Gall’s, Véronique Sanson’s, Francis Cabrel’s and Renaud’s drummer, he also realized the following two records : “La Croisière”, which came out in 2011, then “3298 mètres” (2012). He is now working on an album of French covers, which should come out next year.
Monsieur Gontrand is a dreamer, a solitary artist, who patiently pursues his path, like a navigator, regaling the sphere of French song with fascinating and moving nuances, both profound and sensitive. Entering his world means rediscovering the elegance of words, the nobility of song: in short it means loving him seriously…
