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"When Romain sings nothing moves any more...

It's not because he's rather good-looking, that his teeth are as white as the keys on his keyboard, that he has hair as black as the lacqueur of his baby grand piano and the winning smile of boyish men that we love him much so much...

It's not because his voice is deep and warm, full and at times sorrowful, gentle and at times joyous, nor because he can become enthusiastic or abandon himself to some vague melancholy, that we love him so much...

It is not because he has understood eveything about the despairs of humanity, its joys and winks, nor because he speaks of the first loves of an adolescent lost in the vices of feeling, of a deceived lover for whom everything crumbles, of a tear rolling down the cheek of a hardened man, that we love him so much...

It is not because the man, the musician, the artist knows how to slip into the skin of a woman who feels herself getting old, a "femme qui a dans les reins des désirs de demoiselle, une femme courbée comme un cep de vigne usé, qui a été belle, insolente et infidèle," that we love him so much...

It is not because he plays the piano like a god, because he is able to throw himself into an astonishing pot-pourri of sensual jazz, cheerful foxtrot, academic toccata and tearjerker music, that we love him so much...

It is not because he has been able to develop with his accordeonist companion a complicity of every instant which transpires through the songs which they offer us, that we love him so much...

It is not because he finally reconciles us with French song&endash;good, authentic French song, which gets you in the gut and, in spite of yourself, brings tears to your eyes&endash;, that we love him so much...

It is not because Friday night, at the "Poche," he had a "smash," and literally conquered a large audience with simplicity and humor, delicacy and poetry, that we love him so much...

No, if we love him so much, Romain Didier, it's because he has all that, quite simply..." (La Voix du dimanche , translated by Brian Thompson)

Born in Rome of musical parents&endash;his father was a gifted composer on a Prix de Rome fellowship, his mother an opera singer&endash;, Romain DIDIER is a self-taught pianist much in demand as a composer, arranger and orchestrator for major artists. Since his Grand Prix at the Festival de Spa in Belgium back in 1980 he has also recorded many albums of his own dubbed "essential" and "indispensable" by the critics (Télérama), won numerous awards (Prix Georges Brassens, Prix de la SACEM, Grand Prix du Disque de l'Académie Charles Cros...), and wowed audiences from Bulgaria or East Germany to Boston , where his appearances in the first L'Air du temps festival are fondly remembered by all who heard him. He is an artist able to translate the little experiences of everyday life into jewels that will long sparkle and reverberate in the hearts and minds of his audience. A treat.

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