Gérard Lecointe

A founding member and the artistic director of Percussions Claviers de Lyon, Gérard Lecointe is also an eclectic composer-arranger. He trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, taking classes from François Dupin and Gérard Gastinel. At the end of his studies, he and 4 other students created Percussions Claviers de Lyon (PCL) and he completed his first transcriptions of works by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, which gave PCL its unique sound.

At the same time, from 1983 to 1998 he was one of the main percussionists with the Orchestre de l'Opéra National de Lyon, where he worked with John Eliot Gardiner and Kent Nagano. In 1998 he began devoting himself entirely to Percussions Claviers de Lyon, building up an increasingly diverse contemporary repertoire.

He has been involved in numerous adventures that have led him to work with leading figures such as Keiko Abe, Martial Solal, Doudou N'Daye Rose, David Robertson, and Emilie Simon, and with various composers, including Steve Reich, Gavin Bryars, Thierry Pécou, Denis Badault, Thierry de Mey, François Narboni, and Xu Yi.

Lecointe has arranged roughly 100 pieces for the ensemble and also composes pieces for percussion groups (Point bak, Trois épilogues, D’après masques). His work in 2007 with Jean Lacornerie for Les Folies d’Offenbach and with Emmanuelle Prager for Trois contes marked a turning point in his career, which is now oriented toward the stage.

After composing the music for Cendrillon for Cie Alma Parens, he worked with Jean Lacornerie on a revised version of West Side Story (2009), Coq d’Or (2011), and the musical comedy Bells Are Ringing (2013), for which his rewrite of the score was remarkable.

In 2014 he was appointed director of the Théâtre de La Renaissance (Oullins, Grand Lyon), with a project to promote all forms of musical productions.