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Native from Paris (France), Pierre-André Berthault-Meca was born in a 16th Arrondissement family (made up mostly of engineers and lawyers) where literacy was regarded in high esteem. While his uncle, first viola at the Scala di Milano for four decades, introduced his nephew to the world of music; it's at age eight that Pierre was forever transformed by the marriage of words, images and sounds.
1982 was a magical year for many: a great year at the movies, a great year in music and a great year in science-fiction literature. All fields of interest for a young adventurous Pierre André who was ready to sink his teeth into any meaning of artistic expression.
It's at that time that Pierre André started writing his first short stories, became addicted to the movie going experience and, finally, caught the film music bug which sealed his future in the music realm: "In December 1982, my mother offered me the LP of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial by John Williams. This forever changed my life".
In early 1984, Pierre was able to put his hands on his first computer; an Atari 600XL with a paltry 16Ko of memory. Learning to program with books (a constant in Pierre's approach to knowledge), he started implementing his first hybrids of music and technology. Eventually, the family piano was his next destination as he had to code all the notes of his compositions with hexadecimal values: I spent hours comparing hexadecimal value sheets with the piano keys to ensure that my compositions were 100% accurate both on the Piano and inside the computer. This was a painstaking experience but the results were mind boggling for someone of my age .
Not dismissing literature, Pierre André started writing his own, short-lived, bulletin while in high school and, much to the dismay of his parents, landed a job as computer journalist for the French magazine Micro News. The year was 1989, Pierre was only 15 years old.
After graduation, Pierre did a brief stint at the 16th Arrondissement Conservatory (They didn't swing he jokingly remembers) before enrolling at the American School Of Modern Music where he studied Jazz Piano and Composition for the subsequent years: "the time I spent at the American School really prepared me for everything that came after: Berklee, my Film career and my experience as a teacher".
During the following four years, Pierre André studied with Steve Browman, Steve Carbonara, Joe Malkhom, Peter Giron and other teachers. It is his relationship with Steve Browman, his Piano private instructor, that led Pierre André to start envisioning a movie music career.
Under Steve's jurisdiction, Pierre started composing at an accelerated rate, transcribed countless film music pieces (film music written scores are almost never released to the public) and practiced Piano up to six hours a day: Steve would tell me do this, this and this. The next thing I knew, I was writing chord changes sheets, applying them to a single composition so that it would sound in a dozen different ways.
Another factor was decisive in Pierre's decision to pursue a film music career. In 1996, he landed a job as a Film Music Editor for the French special effects magazine SFX: Cinéma & Effets Spéciaux under the helm of its founder, Alain Bielik.
This position afforded Pierre the opportunity of meeting key people in the film industry, allowed him to travel to Los Angeles to interview composers and visit countless scoring sessions. The next logical step was a move to the United States as Film Scoring isn't, to this day, a University Major taught in France.
On August 31st 1998, Pierre arrived in Boston to attend the legendary Berklee College of Music. Thanks to his years spent at the American School of Modern Music, he was able to skip several classes and ended up graduating from the school in two years instead of four.
Among several techniques and tools gained during his stay in Boston, Pierre was able to augment his Piano chops, developed extensive Composition techniques (Traditional Harmony, Counterpoint and Contemporary methods), learned to orchestrate and conduct a full orchestra to picture and apprehended -literally- hundreds of other techniques that are now part of his musical jargon.
After assembling a 24-piece orchestra for his first final project (a 're-do' of the main title from the TV series The Young Riders), Pierre pulled all the stops with a 12 minute long synthesized score for a montage of Ron Fricke's masterpiece Baraka: "I had to push deadlines on Baraka as it was an incredible amount of work. Kudos goes to Joseph Smith, Dean of the Professional Writing Division at the time, who saw tremendous potential in my efforts and left me enough time to finish the project. Some of the cues on this project, now six years old, still give me the chills. I'm so proud of it".
In parallel to his years at Berklee, Pierre André ignited his own film music publication: Click-Track Magazine. Months of my night life were spent on this magazine; reviews were absolutely stellar -Alain Bielik loved it- but the first issue bombed and I lost a tremendous amount of money. The Internet had already started to change the way we access information and, to this day, there's barely a single Film Music magazine left in the world so the writing was already on the wall .
With his Bachelor's Degree in Film Scoring firmly in hand, Pierre André moved to Los Angeles on August 1st, 2001.
Thanks to his continuing task as a Journalist for SFX and the Soundtrack web site Traxzone, Pierre was able to meet new composers and visit more scoring sessions (I was addicted to The Simpsons for two years, thanks to Alf Clausen for letting me in ). Eventually, being a Journalist was more of a drawback than an advantage: Industry members have the tendency to categorize you so that they know where you stand. I decided to call it quit and have since participated to SFX or Traxzone only on an extraordinary basis .
Once this signal was sent, shockwaves were immediate as Pierre started his contribution to the Film industry; first with his longtime partner Dale Tanguay, eminent Post-Production supervisor, and later on assisting prominent film composers. Following major recommendations, Pierre orchestrated for John Ottman on X2: X-Men United which was his major breakthrough at the time: On X-Men 2, I had the chance of orchestrating several cues including the conclusion of the film. This was a learning experience never encountered before as, until then, all my orchestrations were based on Piano reductions or simply my own Piano compositions. For the first time, the whole product -save the final performance- was entirely within the computer realm .
While he embraced working in Post-Production, Pierre started to find the experience anti-climatic: I was living my dream, and I still am, but Post-Production -film scoring or editing- has the tendency to lock you behind a computer. With the advent of the internet for exchanging data, overnight mail notwithstanding, you end up working with people you never meet. It's no surprise that I eventually felt lonely and started looking at alternatives .
Among those alternatives, Pierre envisioned a return to the highly social art of teaching: I had taught Music lessons in Paris for quite some time and did as well in Boston. However, what I had in mind was different this time around as, not only it would be more than a full-time venture, it would also require capitals and more hearts and souls than just me . After some thinking, the idea of The French Piano Academy came into play.
(To Be Continued...)
Originally Published: 24/11/06Last Updated: 15/08/08
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