Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927) is a French jazz pianist and composer. Solal was born in Algiers, North Africa, to French parents. He was persuaded to study clarinet, saxophone, and piano by his mother, who was an opera singer. He was kicked out of school in 1942 because of his father's Jewish ancestry. Algeria was a French colony, and the Vichy government in France was following Nazi policies. Solal educated himself after having studied classical music in school. He imitated music he heard on the radio. When he was fifteen, he performed publicly for U.S. Army audiences. After settling in Paris in 1950, he began working with Django Reinhardt and expatriates from the United States such as Sidney Bechet and Don Byas. He formed a quartet (occasionally also leading a big band) in the late 1950s, although he had been recording as a leader since 1953. Solal then began composing film music, eventually providing over twenty scores. He composed music for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960). In 1963 he made an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island; the Newport '63 album purporting to be a recording of this gig is actually a studio recreation. At this time, his trio included bassist Guy Pedersen and drummer Daniel Humair. From 1968 he performed and recorded with Lee Konitz in Europe and the U.S. In its January 2011 issue, The Gruppen Review published a 12-page interview in which Solal discusses his work as an eternal "researcher in jazz". Source: Article "Martial Solal" from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.