Born in les Vosges (France) in 1956, he is an admirer of, among others, Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass and Manos Hadjidakisa, and a self-taught guitarist. His meeting with Carolyn Carlson in 1978 was a turning point for his artistic career. He fell in love with Dance as an artform, and became her regular composer. Inspired by her work, he composed his first pieces for Ballet.
The collaboration, which is still on-going, gave birth to many performances including Blue Lady (1983), Steppe (1990) and Signes (1997), and was crowned by a Victoire de la Musique in 1998. He recorded his first album in Venice where he lived from 1981 to 1984. 20 other albums have followed, recorded between 1988 and 2013. World-renowned choreographer Pina Bausch even used some of his melodies for three of her performances: Ten Chi (2004), Vollmond (2006) and Sweet Mambo (2008), as well as Wim Wenders for the soundtrack of his feature film Pina.
Since 1999 he has also started a stage career and performs a repertoire of mostly acoustic melodies across Europe with his Septet ensemble. In 2013, his latest album, Forget me not – the soundtrack of Philippe Genty’s new play – was released.