Emmanuel Bex

Born in Caen in 1959, Emmanuel Bex trained at the conservatory in his hometown and then at the Conservatoire de Paris before turning to jazz, first on piano and then mainly on the Hammond organ, which became his central instrument in the early 1980s. His career is part of an open French jazz, where swing, blues, free improvisation and more written forms coexist with a constant attention to the organ’s timbre. Emmanuel Bex has played with musicians such as Barney Wilen, Ray Lema, Aldo Romano, Philip Catherine or Glenn Ferris, and has developed several notable formats, from the Bex’tet to the BFG trio with Glenn Ferris and Simon Goubert, passing through Open Gate with Francesco Bearzatti and Simon Goubert. His discography under his name includes notably Enfance (1991), Organique (1993), Rouge et Or (1995), Steel Bex (1997), Mauve (1999), 3 (1999), Conversing with Melody (2004), Organ Song (2006), Open Gate (2009), Open Gate featuring Béla Bartók (2011) and Eddy m’a dit (2025). Composer as well as instrumentalist, Emmanuel Bex has also worked on transversal forms, from cine-concerts to pieces for choir and jazz trio, including La Chose Commune in 2016. Emmanuel Bex has frequented for several decades the jazz stages in France and Europe, with a playing style that emphasizes collective momentum, texture contrasts and an organ sound that is at once dense, singing and mobile.