After several years of piano studies in Paris and abroad with famous teachers such as Gaby Casadesus, Maestro Sergio Perticaroli and Professor Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, and after graduating in musical writing at Paris’ Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, François Gassion has been leading an international career of recitals and chamber music concerts for more than twenty years.
In France, he performed in prestigious venues such as the Auditorium of Radio-France, the Cziffra Foundation, the Unesco, the Grenier des Grands-Augustins (former workshop where Picasso has been living for 20 years and has painted « Guernica »), the Debussy Festival of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Avignon Palais des Papes, Saint-Louis des Invalides Church,… as well as in numerous provincial concert halls (Nice, Monte-Carlo, Cannes, Limoges, Macon, Rouen, Compiègne, Chantilly, Avranches,…), including most of the Southern France Festivals and venues.
Outside his native country, François performed at various venues, in Europe (Orquestra de la Ciudad de Barcelona, Roma Estate Musicale, Brussels “Festival des Minimes”, various concert halls and festivals in the Netherlands, in Germany, Czech Republic, Austria,…), as well as on the American and Australian continents. He also regularly plays in duo with the pianist Katia Krivokochenko, with whom he has been touring in China and Latin America.
Highly appreciated for the warmth and softness of his touch, François has also developed a career in the accompaniment of singers, performing in various Lieder recitals. During the 90s he has been invited at the prestigious Royaumont Foundation, who is dedicated to the Lieder repertoire. Since a few years he has been broadening this activity to the accompaniment of dancers in contemporary dance galas.
A prize-winner of the Flame International Piano Competition, François has developed a passion for Grieg and Schumann, of whom he has played the whole repertoire for solo piano, chamber music and Lieder. Acclaimed for his interpretations of Mozart and Haydn piano concertos (where he improvises his own cadenzas), he was also a pioneer in the 90s, in the interpretation of works at the time rarely played in piano recitals, such as masterpieces of composers Alberto Ginastera, George Crumb, Astor Piazzolla or Nino Rota.
Well-known among the Latin American community for his personal interpretation of Piazzolla tangos and his acclaimed jazzy-improvisations on Puccini arias, he has created many pieces of the new trendy generation of Argentinean and Venezuelan composers, and is more and more invited to play in jazz and Latin music concerts, where he sometimes plays his own creations.
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