Marielle Labèque

Marielle Labèque, a pianist from France, built a lengthy partnership with her sibling as part of the Katia and Marielle Labèque piano duo. Together they established Studio KML along with the affiliated KML Recordings imprint, an outlet dedicated to emerging and boundary-pushing musicians. Born in Bayonne during 1952, she grew up in a musical household; her father performed in the Bordeaux Opera chorus while her mother, Ada Cecchi, pursued a career as a pianist after studying with Marguerite Long. From 1955 onward, Marielle and her elder sister Katia received their initial keyboard instruction at home from their mother, later enrolling at the Paris Conservatory. Upon completing her studies in 1968, she joined Katia in specialized training under Jean Hubeau focused on four-hand and two-piano literature within the cycle de perfectionnement, and the following year the pair issued their first recording, Olivier Messiaen: Visions De L'Amen. Throughout the 1970s they remained active in this repertory and attracted a sizable following, yet international recognition arrived with the 1980 release of Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, which surpassed half a million copies sold. The duo continued to champion both canonical works and contemporary pieces by composers including Philip Glass, Luciano Berio, and Arvo Pärt. In the closing years of the decade they turned toward Baroque repertory, collaborating with leading specialists such as Simon Rattle, John Eliot Gardiner, and Andrea Marcon. It was during this period that Labèque wed conductor Semyon Bychkov. Following a decade-long hiatus from the studio, she and her sister launched the KML Recordings label in 2007; the venture issued their own projects as well as recordings by younger and cross-genre groups including Dream House, Kalakan, and Red Velvet. Labèque sustained an intensive schedule with the piano duo across the 2010s, producing several KML albums such as Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Bernstein: West Side Story, and Minimalist Dream House. Beginning in 2020 she contributed to the releases Nazareno: Bernstein, Stravinsky, Golijov and Dream House Quartet. She and her sister maintain a residence in a historic palace in Rome, and she frequently joins her husband on his travels.