René Urtreger has always been an extraordinarily gifted pianist, an assured player who delivers his unhurried flow of ideas with swing and clean improvisations. By the age of eighteen he already stood out as a jazzman. The way he understood the conventions of bop piano even at a young age, playing the style as if he were born into it, soon made him one of the essential figures in the development of modern French jazz.

Born in Paris on July 6, 1934, Urtreger started on piano at the age of five. With the German occupation of France, he was forced to leave his city, and so from six to eleven he didn’t get a chance to study. He moved from town to town in the South of France and North Africa, until 1945, when he went back to Paris and resumed his musical education. He started taking private lessons from Conservatory teacher Rose Lejour, and finished at age sixteen with a clear preference for jazz. “When we came to Paris after the war, I started to dig records by Count Basie and Lester young, Erroll Garner (I was completely crazy about him when I was twelve), Art Tatum and Fats Waller.”

In 1949 he became deeply influenced by the new bebop trends of jazz after hearing Charlie Parker’s recording of “Bongo Bop”. On piano his main references were Bud Powell (“whose playing I love the most”), Thelonious Monk (“for his compositions”), and John Lewis (“his musicality”). “After those big three,” Urtreger concluded years later, “I’m a fan of Hank Jones, Horace Silver, Al Haig and Red Garland.”

He became known at eighteen one night when he replaced Mimi Perrin as the pianist in a Parisian cafe restaurant called Sully d’Auteil. The place boasted a small band of talented students, including Sacha Distel (guitar), Hubert Damisch (tenor sax), Jean-Marie Ingrand (bass) and Jean-Louis Viale (drums). As soon as he started to play, everyone was pleasantly surprised by René’s incisive and swinging playing, and by the stimulating strength his piano infused into the rhythm section. After the gig, he was offered the opportunity to play there every Saturday night.

Spurred by his success, in 1953 he signed up for the National Amateur Jazz Contest held in Paris by the City Hall of the 5th district. René placed first on piano, and he decided then and there that he would become a professional musician. The rest is a glorious career in jazz written in capital letters by his superb trio sets or backing such American big names as Miles Davis, Lester young or local stars like Barney Wilen, Guy Lafitte, Michel de Villers, Pierre Michelot and Christian Garros.

He was described by André Hodeir as “one of the European musicians who swings the best.” Listening to these recordings, there’s little doubt why René Urtreger was the favorite accompanist of most of the American stars who contributed to the prolific Parisian jazz scene of the Fifties and early Sixties.

Still active in 2018, René Urtreger is a living legend of French jazz.

Jordi Pujol (From the inside liner notes of FSRCD 956)