Jean Pierre Como a musical journey between jazz and the Mediterranean
Written on 9 September 2025 - 151 views
French pianist and composer Jean Pierre Como has built a unique career, between improvisation, melody, and emotion. From Sixun to his solo projects, he explores a jazz open to the world, nourished by his Mediterranean roots.
There are musicians who cross decades without ever losing that spark of curiosity, that taste for both inner and collective journeys. Jean-Pierre Como is one of them. French pianist, composer, and improviser, he has built a singular, rich, and luminous career, made of explorations and encounters.
The first notes
Born in Paris into a family of Italian origin where music held an essential place, Como discovered the piano very early. The conservatory provided him with a solid classical training, but as a teenager he quickly turned to improvisation. For him, jazz became a space of freedom, a place where rhythm dialogues with melody and where emotion guides technique.
From the early 1980s, he recorded his first compositions and accompanied various groups, from Afro percussion to French chanson, already proving his taste for diversity.
Sixun: the founding adventure
In 1984, he founded with Paco Sery the group Sixun, which would mark an entire generation of listeners and musicians. Jazz-rock, fusion, African pulses: the band shook up the codes and conquered the European scene. Como’s compositions, both lyrical and powerful, structured this adventure. Four decades later, the story continues as Sixun received in 2023 the Grand Prix du Jazz de la SACEM, a rare recognition for a French collective.
A personal path
In parallel, Como followed his own road. His first album Padre (1989) already revealed his desire to tell an intimate story through jazz. Each project that followed can be read as a chapter in a great musical narrative:
- Solea (1991) and Express Paris-Roma (1995) affirmed his bond with the Mediterranean and Italy.
- Empreinte (1999) and Storia (2001) revealed a narrative writing, almost cinematographic.
- L’Âme sœur (2006), a suite for orchestra, bore the mark of a moving tribute to his late sister.
- With Boléro (2013) or Express Europa (2015), he multiplied encounters with voices and musicians from different horizons, from singers Walter Ricci and Hugh Coltman to saxophonist Stefano Di Battista.
Across these albums, one constant emerges: the search for the right melody, for the emotion that speaks directly to the heart. As he himself says, “the piano sings.” And this song takes shape just as well in an acoustic trio as in a large ensemble.
His recent projects are proof of this. Infinite (2018) and Infinite Volume II (2024) in quartet explore open, almost cosmic forms, praised by critics (CHOC de Jazz Magazine). My Little Italy (2020) returns to an intimate, almost autobiographical vein, while Com ô Paradis (2023), his first solo album, offers a luminous inner journey.
A well-deserved recognition
In 2018, Steinway recognized him as a Steinway Artist, joining the select circle of pianists supported by the prestigious house. But more than titles or awards, what strikes about Jean-Pierre Como is his fidelity to a vision: sharing music as a human experience, sensitive, and always turned towards others.
An open, timeless music
Listening to Jean-Pierre Como is like traveling through landscapes. You find echoes of his Mediterranean roots, the rigor of classical music, the energy of jazz-rock, the warmth of Latin jazz. But beyond styles, there is this rare ability to create an atmosphere, to make the silence between the notes resonate, to give the piano an almost human voice.
Today he continues to surprise and invent, in solo or quartet, on stage or in the studio. His path is not only that of a jazz pianist, but of a storyteller of sound, always in search of new horizons.
See you soon, here or elsewhere !
Chrys
