Jean-Pierre Armengaud has been played on NTS in shows including The Early Bird Show w/ Jack Rollo, featured first on 19 July 2024. Songs played include Je Te Veux (1900).

Born in 1943, Jean-Pierre Armengaud began studying music at the age of five. Trained by teachers like Marcel Jacquinot, Pierre Sancan, and later by Jacques Fevrier and Reine Gianoli, he graduated as a concert pianist from the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris in 1965, and was awarded diplomas in the Italian International Competitions of Vercelli and Pozzoli. He received grants to study in Sienna, Salzburg and Moscow, and began an international career (Germany, Belgium, URSS, India, etc.) with particular fondness for the works of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy and Bartok. In France he appeared in numerous radio and television broadcasts, both as a pianist and sometimes as a producer. He plays frequendy with the French Radio Orchestras and at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.

He has made eight recordings (Szymanowski, Denissov, Boulez, Satie, Janacek, etc.) and is in the process of preparing CD recordings of works by Prokofiev, Milhaud, Janacek, Richard Strauss, and Schnittke. His extremely wide repertory extends from music for fortepiano to contemporary music, from the piano solo to the chamber music and the piano and orchestra repertory. He has performed with partners like Alain Meunier, Devy Erlih, the Parennin Quartet, Dominique Merlet, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Domi-nique de Williencourt, the BWV Trio…

But what distinguishes Jean-Pierre Armengaud is that he combined his musical studies with a brilliant university career, and is a graduate of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris.

He is particularly interested in expanding the forms of musical dissemination and the promotion of contemporary music. With this in mind he founded the Fetes Musicales de la Sainte Bourne in 1970 during which he gave the first performances of numerous contemporary works by composers such as Ghana, Stockhausen, Denissov, Schnittke, and others. In addition he has organized a large many musical events, given commented recitals, especially in the French "Maisons de la Culture" and universities, and collaborated with painters, actors and poets.

Perhaps this versatility of his interests explains his profound feeling of affinity with Erik Satie. He is also the author of the History of Music from Beethoven to the Present Day in the Petite Encyclopedie Larousse, of articles in French and foreign musical periodicals and, recendy, of a book on Satie. Since 1975 he has also assumed administrative responsabilities, first in the Ministry of Culture as musical delegate in the Provence-Cote d'Azur Region, then in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Culturel Adviser in Stockholm and in Athens, and as director of the French Institute in Hamburg. At present he is technical adviser on the creation of new works to the French Radio.