Jacques Loussier Trio

Born on 26 October 1934 in Angers, France, Loussier trained as a classical pianist yet found greater financial reward in commercial popular music. During 1959 he conceived the notion of adapting Johann Sebastian Bach’s piano compositions to a jazz-inflected manner. Joined by Pierre Michelot and Christian Garros, the resulting trio attained broad international popularity among general listeners. Their approach, marked by a restrained and dispassionate delivery as well as its considerable market success, nevertheless alienated committed jazz followers. To mainstream audiences the Bach interpretations became most familiar as the recurring soundtrack for the award-winning Benson & Hedges cinema and television campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. From the 1990s onward Loussier pursued comparable crossovers with works by Satie, Bach, Chopin, and Mozart.