BIOGRAPHY

Jerome Baur

Short biography

Born in France, Jerome Baur has lived in Switzerland since 2000. Trained as a pianist, he has worked since 1990 as a composer, arranger and sound designer in the fields of music for images and live performances on several continents.

Putting new stories to music, going beyond words and creating links is what allows him to sculpt emotions and what motivates him to compose for new stories to share.

Full biography

I was born in Nancy, France in 1968. Two years later, my parents, who came from the graphic arts and were making animated films at the time, decided to move to Paris. I grew up in the Montmartre district.

Between gouache, Indian ink, celluloid and the title bench of my parents' studio, I was "infused" in a universe of images and music. There were the songs that my father composed, the radio and the vinyls that my parents listened to continuously while working.

From Miles Davis to Gainsbourg, from the Beatles to Bach, from Baden Powell to Charlie Parker, our apartment on rue Lepic was never silent. This is probably where my appetite for music and sounds was born.

At the age of eight, I started playing percussion on anything and everything. I cobbled together a cardboard drum kit before getting a "real one" two years later. But the desire to "compose" was slowly felt, and it is finally towards the piano that I went.

After a few years spent at the Conservatory and with private teachers, jazz gradually became an obvious choice. I was thirteen years old when I met a great man of jazz, the pianist and composer Michel Sardaby.

He became my teacher and for seven years I received his uncompromising teaching in his apartment located not far from the Pigalle district.

The 80's are well underway. I am seventeen years old and I am attracted to world music and new technologies that are coming in cascades. At the end of my schooling, I pass the entrance exam for the SACEM show school "Le studio des variétés".

There, I followed two years of training to the professions of the scene, in particular with Christiane Legrand, sister of Michel Legrand, Armand Biancheri brother of pen of Nougaro and many others at a rate of forty hours per week of song, writing, piano, dance, techniques of the sound and the light.

At the same time, I passed the SACEM arranger's contest and at the same time I realized my first mandates for the audiovisual industry as well as concerts.

After graduating from the Studio des variétés, I started several activities: during the day, I rehearsed and/or composed with different bands and groups as a keyboard player; I composed for films; I approached production agencies and signed my first jingles for radio and television; I composed soundtracks for the theater; I gave private piano and singing lessons and in the evening, I played in jazz clubs in the Paris area.

My first musics in the image make me feel the need to acquire more knowledge concerning the musics of the world. Because I didn't have enough money to travel, I realize that I live in a megalopolis where almost every nation is represented!

I decided to go and meet artists from all over the world, from neighborhood to neighborhood, from community to community, with the same deal: "teach me your culture and in exchange we will create and record a music or a song together".

This ”artistic deal” allowed me to play and learn from musicians from Africa, Asia, USA, Scandinavia and Europe. Thanks to them, my musical palette has been enriched with other rhythms, melodies and harmonies, other colors and flavors.

This will also allow me to go on European tours and to play in big festivals with jazz bands, Raï fusion, big band of Cuban and afro-jazz music, hip-hop jazz, etc. At the same time, I am developing a rhythm'n blues band that will start in sordid Parisian pubs and end up playing at the Parc des Princes and on Canal+.

When I look back on that time, I can't figure out how I fit it all into one week. Anyway, ten years of craziness, discovery and training have gone by.

In the middle of the 90's, during a tour in Brittany, I met the one who will become my wife, Sveva. She is originally from Ticino (Italian Switzerland) and studies marine micro-biology. During her PhD, we live together in Paris.

The 90's are the golden age of advertising and, after ten years of struggle, I am finally part of the small family of composers who have been working for television and documentaries. I am finally living from my music.

Five years passed when my wife felt the need to return to Switzerland and, since she had left her family, her friends and her country to live with me in France, I decided to return the favor by following her to Switzerland.

So, in 2000, I said goodbye to Paris, to all the groups I was part of, to the production agencies I worked with, and moved to Lausanne. When I arrived in Switzerland, I had to start all over again. Everything is new. From the social codes to the rules, from the health system to the political system, I will have to learn to swim in the Swiss land and its cultural domain.

The music I compose is like a constellation. 
In movement, they gravitate, cross each other and from time to time
a sound, a rhythm or a melody that comes from afar crosses this system. New colors or questions enter the scene, links and fusions are formed and inspire a next creation.