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Artist
Laurent de Wilde
12+ albums
jazznu jazzacid jazzpianodowntempo
about
Laurent De Wilde, the Mid-Atlantic piano player of the year, is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. This school and a few others like it are called Les Grandes Ecoles and they are comparable to the Ivy League. They produce the elite in this country. And so it seemed appropriate to ask De Wilde: "What's a nice guy like you doing in a métier like this?" He replied with a very American have-a-nice-day croon: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." The time had been late. De Wilde did not decide to take jazz seriously until the age of 23 (he's 34 now). It had gone down like this. His father was an official in the French Embassy in Washington, Laurent was born there. The family went back and forth. He has two passports. Educated in France, he was too busy climbing the educational system's elite ladder to worry about what would come next. In the Grandes Ecoles, education becomes a sort of end in itself. He used to go on vacation with a Greek dictionary in his backpack. He had little time for the piano throughout high and prep schools. The entrance exam for the Ecole Normale is tough. Once accepted, however, he found he could "coast. Once you're in, you're cool. You're paid. They pay you to go to school. Isn't that hip? I could play music all day long." The school sends students abroad for a year and when he asked to go to New York they said "Why not?" Working in the consulate's cultural service by day, jazz was "thrown in my face" at night. He returned to graduate bu
