Martial Solal

Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927) is a French jazz pianist and composer.

Solal was born in Algiers, French Algeria, to Algerian Jewish parents. He was persuaded to study clarinet, saxophone, and piano by his mother, who was an opera singer. He was expelled from school in 1942 because of his parents' Jewish ancestry. Algeria was a French colony, and the Vichy regime in France was following Nazi policies. Solal educated himself after having studied classical music in school. He imitated music he heard on the radio. When he was 15, he performed publicly for United States Army audiences.

After settling in Paris in 1950, he began working with Django Reinhardt and U.S. expatriates such as Sidney Bechet and Don Byas. He formed a quartet (occasionally also leading a big band) in the late 1950s, although he had been recording as a leader since 1953. Solal then began composing film music, eventually providing over 20 scores. He composed music for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960).

In 1963, he made an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island; the Newport '63 album purporting to be a recording of this gig is actually a studio recreation with overdubbed applause, as documented in the sleeve notes of some later reissues. At this time, his trio included bassist Guy Pedersen and drummer Daniel Humair. From 1968, he performed and recorded with Lee Konitz in Europe and the U.S.

In its January 2011 issue, The Gruppen Review published…