Boris Vian

A jack-of-all-trades, Boris Vian devoted his life to music and literature. His sense of provocation, his convictions, his intransigence, his corrosive humor and his boundless poetic imagination made him one of the outstanding figures of the post-war period. A scientist by training (he graduated as an engineer from Centrale), he was also a writer, trumpeter, jazz columnist, screenwriter, author and composer, translator... To retrace his musical career is above all to address his passion for jazz in all its aspects: "The three great moments of my life were Ellington's concert in 1938, Gillespie's in 1948, and Ella's a little later".