Philippe Thuriot grew up in his parents’ pub near Brussels, where he was submerged in live music from young age on, played by his uncles: Le Bal Musette. That’s where his love for the accordion originated from. He obtained a scholarship for the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he was taught and inspired by Mogens Ellegaard.
Since then, for the last 25 years, Thuriot has been touring the international music scene. He collaborated on La Tristeza Compline (1996) and Pitié (2008), two dance performances by Les Ballets C de la B, the international dance company directed by Alain Platel. This resulted in more than 200 shows throughout the world.
Philippe Thuriot also starred as guest in chamber orchestras and ensembles, such as Oxalys, Het Collectief, Il Gardellino, Ictus. He joined Klangforum Wien for the world creation of the Pinocchio Opera by P. Boesmans / J. Pommerat in Aix-en-Provence, Brussels (De Munt), Dijon and Bordeaux.
In 2015, he recorded the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach for Warner Classics / Klara. This recording internationally obtained excellent reviews, and could be considered one of the highlights of his career.
He performed at numerous renown international festivals, such asBachelona in Barcelona and Crete Senesi in Tuscany, in honour of the 70th birthday of Philippe Herreweghe.
At the same time, he revised the Goldberg Variations for the dance performance Sehnsucht by Koen Augustijnen and the Mainz State Theatre.
In 2018 he recorded his last CD with Warner Classics, containing music by François Couperin and Maurice Ravel, again met with very favourable reviews.
However, Philippe is not only a gifted classical performer, he is also well known in the jazz circuit.
He played together with Osama Abdulrasol, Catherine Delasalle, Steve Houben, Charles Loos, and also with Philippe Catherine, Aka Moon, Tcha Limberger, Ellery Eskelin, René Lussier, Mark Feldman and Uri Caine. Each of them a master on his own in the international jazz scene.
Recently he also released a CD with his own compositions for his jazz trio “Three men in a boat”.
He has been invited for the 25th anniversary of the BJO (Brussels Jazz Orchestra) tour, conducted by Maria Schneider, ending in the Wiener Konzerthaus, October 2018.
The Flemish composer Peter Vermeersch is composing an accordion concerto. A world creation especially dedicated to Thuriot, to be performed in the spring of 2019, in collaboration with the Flemish Symphony Orchestra.
You could easily call Thuriot a musical centipede. His passion for good music is so profound, that his heart simply makes him refuse to narrow down on one genre. Hence, he performs ánd excels in about every kind of music that could be played on his instrument: classical music, jazz, tango, French chanson, you name it, he plays it, he plays with it, he improvises on it, he mixes and intertwines, he adds his special Thuriot-touch to it, yet he remains faithful to the soul of the music at all times.
His latest program “Bach in time” is a catharsis of his improvisation talent and his love for Bach.
For purists, revisiting Bach is deemed as blasphemic as reconsidering the theories of Stephen Hawking, but that’s not the idea at all. It is about sublimating Bach’s music through new looks by the following: reinventing a structure or chord table, deducting a beat to create a Balkan sound, mutating a choral into a tango, adding jazzy approaches, etc.
Bach always remains omnipresent.
