André Manoukian is a pianist of “Armenian-Cosmic” origin, as he likes to call himself. He was immersed in a musical environment from an early age, starting piano lessons at 6, an instrument for which he quickly developed a passion. Jazz pianist, composer and music columnist André Manoukian is a multi-faceted artist.
Inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s algorithms, he developed a start-up called MatchTune, which synchronizes music with images.

His latest albums:Les pianos de Gainsbourg(2021), in which he pays tribute to Serge Gainsbourg by surrounding himself with female icons: Melody Gardot, Camélia Jordana, Isabelle Adjani, Rosemary Standley, Camille Lellouche and Elodie Frégé; and Anouch(2022), a musical journey to the Orient of his ancestors.His latest book: On the Jazz Roads(2022), Harper Collins .

“Over the course of evolution , man has shaped his body according to his own interests. His planetary success over all species, owes it to the invention of language , which which enabled him to obtain information about his fellow creatures, and thus increase the size of the clan, which became a village, then a city, then a nation, then an empire.

Language having been its main weapon for conquering power, the human ear has specialized in its zone, between 20hz and 20,000 hz. Below or above that, we filter. Yet these sounds exist in nature: ocean waves emit sub-bass tones that we don’t hear, the Mediterranean mistral sometimes blows so hard that it sends us frequencies between 5 hz and 20 hz that have a physiological effect on our bodies. These sounds, which we don’t recognize, have an effect on us: they put our organism on alert, without us having the slightest response to counter these stimuli, which become generators of anxiety and fatigue.

Today, we ‘re immersed in oceans of sound that overwhelm us to the point of taking away our free will. One of the missions of Semaine du Son, is to awaken us to this sonic relentlessness with which we are violently confronted.

It’ s time to sit back, reflect and , above all, be silent to rest our ears, and our souls. It’s to wake up and take part in a debate too often scorned that I agreed to be the patron of this edition.

The role of the musician since Orpheus: to transform Chaos (disorder) into Cosmos (order). Then, like Baudelaire, we can say again: “ Music often takes me like a sea…”.

André Manoukian

André Manoukian ‘s two major events :

Monday, January 15 at 7:00 pm He will accompany on piano the concert given by theOrchestre symphonique Pasdeloup conducted by conductor Mélanie Levy- Thiébaut.Thiébaut alongside opera singer Mariamielle Lamagat and rapper Baloji, at UNESCO.

Thursday January 18 at 7:00 pm He takes part in the evening dedicated to the theme: ” Artificial Intelligence in the service of audio” in partnership with IRCAM.