Photo credits
Philippe Malet
Christian is a drummer, as evidenced by his last two solo albums. One is not at all obliged to acknowledge that he has fifty years of career behind him, as he tends to quickly forget this himself—not due to Alzheimer’s, but because his enthusiasm and appetite remain unchanged. Alert to all artistic matters and at the heart of the political questions within the collective, if ARFI remains an association of shared sensibilities, it owes some of this to him.
Christian is an improviser, as shown by the number of musicians he has welcomed with passionate generosity into the twists and turns of his sense of spontaneous creation, inspiring them with the pleasure of invention and discovery. If ARFI remains a place of research, it sometimes owes this to him.
Christian is a music lover, he loves to listen to music—any music, drawing from all languages, those that speak to him and inspire him, those that remind him of the need for wonder. If ARFI continues to pay close attention to the folklores of humanity, both present and past, it occasionally owes this to him.
Christian is self-taught, and he brings all of his culture and desires into every show, concert, and creation that has shaped our collective, and if ARFI is the fruit of this repertoire of imaginations, it certainly owes some of that to him as well.
Despite his aversion to numbers and his definitive inclination toward letters, you can hear him on about fifty albums out of approximately eighty recorded over forty-five years on the ARFI label. By carefully studying his discography, you'll notice that he is elegant (in the photos), intelligent (not just in the photos), not always perfectly on time (except in improvisation), and quite aristocratic (you really have to listen closely for that).
You can still applaud him in the group Indolphylités, the Chang cine-concert, the Workshop de Lyon, and borrow his photographic gaze in the creation Les parfums du fil.
He has participated in countless ARFI adventures, at the pinnacle of which is La Marmite Infernale, of which he is one of the founders.