French author, composer, performer, actor, writer and
poet Jacques Higelin died in Paris on April 6, 2018. He was 77. His long,
almost endless concerts - sometimes more than seven hours at the Cirque d'hiver,
in Paris! - were also his trademark. Higelin was born on October 18, 1940 in
Brou-sur-Chantereine (Seine-et-Marne) into a modest family. His father was a
railwayman. Little Jacques expressed very early the wish to become a singer. At
the age of 14, he did not hesitate to present himself at an audition of the
cabaret Les Trois Baudets . Then he did his military service in Algeria, then
at war, during which he wrote the Letters of Love of a twenty-year-old soldier,
published by Grasset in 1987. It was at the cinema that Jacques Higelin, a
former student of the Simon course, began his career in 1959. He played in
Henri Fabiani's Le bonheur est pour demain . In the early 1960s, he toured with
directors Yves Robert ( Bébert and l'Omnibus ) and Roger Leenhardt (A girl in
the mountains). But it is music that paces the life of the young actor. "I
heard my grandmother sing in the garden. She had a delicious voice. After work,
my father went to the piano and accompanied us. [...] I fell asleep to the
sound of my dad's harmonica", he says in I do not live my life, I dream
(Fayard). A father to whom he dedicates "Parc Montsouris", a superb
piano refrain. Jacques appeared as a street singer in 1977’s “Another Man,
Another Chance”.
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