Jean-Michel Pilc

French pianist Jean-Michel Pilc has earned acclaim as an inventive improviser and dedicated instructor whose harmonically rich and fleet-fingered approach defines a distinctive strain of post-bop jazz. Although he had been performing since the 1980s, wider recognition arrived after he relocated to New York and began leading a trio featuring drummer Ari Hoenig and bassist François Moutin, documented on the 2000 release Together: Live at Sweet Basil and the 2011 album Threedom. Pilc has served on the faculty at McGill University and has appeared alongside John Abercrombie, David Liebman, Marilyn Mazur, Roy Haynes, and Stephane Wrembel. Several projects with saxophonist Sam Newsome include the 2017 recording Magic Circle and 2023’s Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged, while his dual-tenor-saxophone ensemble with Al McLean and John Sweenie was introduced on the 2025 album Total Madness Quintet.

Born in Paris, France, in 1960, Pilc developed an early fascination with jazz and began studying piano near the age of ten. Largely self-taught, he first pursued engineering and held a position at France’s national space agency CNES before committing to music as a full-time profession in his mid-twenties. During this period he performed regularly and issued the albums Funambule in 1989 and Big One in 1993.

Pilc settled in New York City in 1995 and assembled the trio with Hoenig and Moutin that appeared on 2000’s Together: Live at Sweet Basil as well as 2002’s Welcome Home, issued by the Dreyfus label. Subsequent Dreyfus releases comprised 2004’s Follow Me, 2007’s New Dreams, and 2010’s True Story. Additional collaborations involved Michael Brecker, John Abercrombie, David Liebman, and Roy Haynes.

Beyond performing, Pilc has maintained an active teaching career that includes appointments at New York University and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He continues to tour and record, returning to the longstanding trio for the 2011 album Threedom. The solo-piano project What is This Thing Called Love and the trio date Composing, recorded with bassist Mads Vinding and percussionist Marilyn Mazur, both appeared in 2015. Further pairings with Sam Newsome yielded Magic Circle in 2017, while the double-LP solo effort Parallel arrived in 2018 alongside additional unaccompanied sessions such as Visions and Symphony. In 2023 Pilc reunited with Moutin and Hoenig for YOU Are the Song and again with Newsome for Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged. The following year he contributed to Stephan Wrembel’s Tryptich. In 2025, alongside further solo piano work, Pilc launched the Total Madness Quintet featuring the dueling tenor saxophonists Al McLean and John Sweenie.