Michel Graillier is a rare jazz pianist; rare like certain gas like substances. From beneath his fingertips, strange mysterious music gushes forth. Music of shadow and light of mist and ember, music that moves you and you don't really even know why.
Born in Lens in the north of France in 1946, Michel Graillier started off his musical career in Paris in 1968 with the JeanLuc Ponty Quartet and recorded a superb tribute to Monk the following year with Steve Lacy called 'Epistrophy'. In the 70's he played with a number of American musicians (Philly Joe Jones, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin), and played with Barney Wilen and his group MOSHI before joining up with Christian Vander's Magma for two years. He has also recorded with François Jeanneau, Christian Escoudé, and Jean François Jenny-Clark.1977 was the year of his decisive meeting with Chet Baker with whom he remained right up to Chet's death, as an accompanist but as a road companion and friend more than anything else.
Pianist in the tradition of modem jazz post-hop, "Mickey" has developed through time a poetically lunar sort of personality with periods of both torment and serenity. His influences (Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett) are too passionately acknowledged to emerge as mere clichés. Whether he be alone on his keyboards or exchanging with a soloist, this at once demanding and fragile pianist proves that jazz is for him an internal necessity; an essential adventure.