artist info

Jacky Terrasson, one of the most widely travelled of all jazz pianists, is the “piano player of happiness” according to Telerama magazine in France. He is an exhilarating musician, one of those who play their public straight to euphoria.

Introduced in The New York Times in 1994 as "one of the thirty artists poised to shape the trajectory of American culture in the following three decades," pianist Jacky Terrasson has lived up to this acclaim by becoming the most widely heard French jazz musician on digital platforms. Born in Berlin in 1965 to an American mother and a French father, he pursued studies in classical piano in France before enrolling at the Berklee College of Music. In 1993, he clinched the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition.

This Franco-American national has never stopped dazzling us, either through his prestigious collaborations, with greats such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dianne Reeves, Jimmy Scott, Charles Aznavour, and Ry Cooder, or with his minimalist and energetic music hammered out with drummer Leon Parker and bassist Ugonna Okegwo in a trio that was considered one of the best jazz trios of the 90s. This intuition, this instinct, this openness, leads him to the discovery of the great burgeoning talents of his many groups (including, over the years, Eric Harland, Ben Williams, Jamire Williams, and Justin Faulkner).

If we were to describe his playing, we would compare Terrasson to Bud Powell for his carefully controlled velocity on the piano keys, to Ahmad Jamal for his sense of phrasing, but also for his knowledge of the great French composers savants, such as Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. Through his fingers, as he mingles and melts the colors and the inventions of the great pianists of yesterday and today, Terrasson creates his own style, all in subtleties, freshness, facility, and ease; with the desire to rewrite and reinvent, again, every day, and forever.