Laurent de Wilde

Laurent de Wilde (born in Washington, D.C. in 1960) is a French jazz pianist, composer and writer.

Raised in France from 1964, he joined the École Normale Supérieure in 1981, philosophy section. In 1983, during a music scholarship, he lived in New York at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University. At the expiration of his scholarship six months later, he decided to settle permanently in New York. With the encouragement and advice of his elders, he performed in town and joined the trumpeter Eddie Henderson's regular band.

In 1987, he recorded the first of a series of four albums for Ida Records Off the Boat with Eddie Henderson, Ralph Moore, backed by Ira Coleman on bass and Billy Hart on drums. In 1989, Odd and Blue was released with Coleman and Jack DeJohnette (drums), followed in 1990 by Colors of Manhattan, with Coleman, Henderson and Lewis Nash. De Wilde then returned to Paris to settle but came back to New York in 1992 to record a trio album, Open Changes, with Coleman and Billy Drummond (drums). The success of this record in 1993 earned him the Django Reinhardt Prize, awarded to the best musician of the year. He now shares his time between Paris and his career in New York as a leader or sideman with Barney Wilen, Aldo Romano and André Ceccarelli.

In 1995, de Wilde signed with Sony Jazz (Columbia) and recorded The Back Burner. In 1996, he published Monk (L'Arpenteur/Gallimard), a biography of Thelonious Monk on which he had worked a long time. The book was an immediate success, and joined the permanent Folio catalog in October 1997. It was awarded the Charles Delaunay Prize in 1996 as "the best book about jazz" and the Pelleas Award. Monk has been translated and published in New York, London, Tokyo, Barcelona and Milan.

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