Benoît Charest

Benoît Charest (French pronunciation: ​[bənwa ʃaʁɛ]; born in 1964) is a Canadian guitarist and film score composer from Quebec. He is best known for the soundtrack of the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003), for which he won a César Award for Best Music Written for a Film as well as a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Music. The song "Belleville Rendez-vous", in particular, earned him an Academy Award nomination as well as a Grammy Award nomination.

Benoît Charest was born in Montreal in 1964. At the age of 13 he started playing guitar and learned to play the songs of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin by ear. He later discovered jazz and decided at 17 to undertake private lessons with Neil Smolar, a graduate from the Berklee School of Music in Boston. During his college studies, Charest earned a living playing with established jazz musicians in Montreal.

In 1991, Charest produced his first score for Montréal rétro, a documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada; he composed, arranged and conducted the music for the film. In the late 1990s, Charest co-founded Ben & Max Studios with musician Maxime Morin (better known as DJ Champion) — a company specializing in jingles and soundtracks. In 2001 Morin sold his share in the company back to Charest in order to continue his own personal musical career.

...
Wikipedia