A week ago the great musical polymath André Hodeir celebrated his 90th birthday. Bon anniversaire! Here he is playing jazz violin in the early 1940s. Among his many books are Hommes et problemes du jazz and La musique depuis Debussy, translated into English as Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence (1956) and Since Debussy (1961). Selections of his translated writings on jazz were reissued a few years ago in a single volume.
One his most interesting compositions is "Jazz et Jazz," a work from the early 1950s that combined musique concrète with improvisations by a jazz group featuring the pianist Martial Solal. You can sample a small snippet here. Here's Hodeir in the 1950s talking about the music he wrote for a Jacques Cousteau soundtrack. And here's some footage of him in the early 1970s.
He's featured at 41:50, and various other points, in this documentary on jazz in France from the early 1990s. And here he is, just last year, in a documentary about Django Reinhardt (at 1:50):
Hodeir was exactly ten years and four days younger than his friend the jazz discographer, journalist, historian, and promoter Charles Delaunay, who would have turned one hundred this month.
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