Harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has a reputation for original and unpredictable Baroque keyboard music programming. In addition to playing Baroque harpsichord music, he also maintains careers as a jazz pianist and as a film music composer. Unrelated to the race car driver of the same name, Rondeau was born in Paris on April 23, 1991. When he was six, he heard a harpsichord on the radio and demanded to know how to make that sound. For the next ten years, he took lessons from Blandine Verlet. Rondeau went on to the Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP) and then to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied with James Johnstone and Carole Cerasi. Several awards announced a forthcoming major talent, including a first prize at the harpsichord competition of the Musica Antiqua Festival in Bruges, Belgium, and a second prize at the Prague Spring International Harpsichord Competition, in 2012, and the Young Soloist award in the Francophone Public Radio Competition in 2014. On the strength of these, Rondeau was signed to the Erato label later that year. Heard with François Lazarevitch on a 2014 Alpha recording of Bach's flute sonatas, Rondeau made his solo debut on Erato with the recital Bach Imagine in 2015. His recitals have included a critically acclaimed debut at the French embassy in Washington, D.C., and a performance at the Festival des Saintes. Rondeau performs with the period-instrument ensemble Nevermind, founded with three friends from the Paris Conservatory, and with the jazz ensemble Note Forget. Rondeau composed the soundtrack to the German film Paula, about painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, in 2016, and that music was also released on Erato. In 2016, Rondeau released Vertigo, an album featuring music by Rameau and Pancrace Royer, following that up with Bach Dynastie (2017), an album of keyboard concertos by members of the Bach family, and an album of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (2018). Rondeau has continued to record for Erato, issuing an album annually through the COVID-19 pandemic. These included Barricades (2020), devoted to music by the lutenist Thomas Dunford, Melancholy Grace (2021), a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (2022), and 2023's Gradus ad Parnassum, featuring music as far forward in time as Debussy played on the harpsichord. ~ James Manheim, Rovi