- Alain Goraguer
Alain Goraguer (
August 20 1931 ,Rosny sous Bois ,France ) is a French jazz pianist, sideman ofBoris Vian andSerge Gainsbourg ,arranger andcomposer . He reached his creative peak in the 1960s and 1970s. He also recorded and composed the soundtrack to the filmFantastic Planet .Biography
His family was from Nice, on the coast of the Mediterranean, where young Alain studied the piano. He abandoned the violin without remorse, and at the age of twenty had an influential encounter with pianist Jack Diéval, passing through Nice, who firmly advised him to give up everything for the piano. At the same time, Alain studied harmony with Julien Falk, and soon won second place in an amateur jazz competition.
He soon went to Paris where he indulged his passion for jazz. At Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he accompanied singer Simone Alma, he met Boris Vian. Together, they wrote "Je Bois", "La Java des bombes atomiques", "Fais-moi mal Johnny" et "Ne vous mariez pas les filles". Alain then scored the music for the film "J'irai cracher sur vos tombres" (1959). He wrote the orchestration for young Serge Gainsbourg, indeed he arranged all of his albums up until "Gainsbourg percussions" (1964). With Gainsbourg, Goraguer scored more film music, such as that for "L'Eau à la bouche" (1960).
In the 1960s and 70's, he did the orchestration for "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", winning the grand prize for
The Eurovision Song Contest in 1965. He wrote numerous arrangements forJean Ferrat ,France Gall ,Juliette Gréco ,Nana Mouskouri ,Adamo and many others. Alain Goraguer then opened the door for a renewal in popularity of orchestral compositions. He also composed the title theme "La Vache enragée" (1965), sung by Brigitte Fontaine.He also wrote a number of easy listening albums under the name Laura Fontaine.
Trivia
Producer
Madlib avowedly inspired himself from, and sampled Goraguer's work on the firstQuasimoto album.Hiphop-Producer
V.I.C. sampled the song "Le Bracelet" from the La Planete Sauvage soundtrack for Big Pun's track titled Boomerang from the albumCapital Punishment .On the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides, Air were clearly greatly inspired by Goraguer's work, especially the soundtrack to La Planète Sauvage (some of Air's tracks almost sound like covers!)
External links
*imdb name|0329751
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