Biographie

Alain Guyonnet, single father of two daughters, Stella and Marina, who almost haunt his dreams daily.

Born in Geneva, a Swiss citizen of French origin, Alain Guyonnet embarked on his musical journey at a very young age.

Claiming a self-taught approach to this art (jazz piano and guitar, composition, arrangement), he nevertheless joined Madame Isabelle Nef’s harpsichord class at the Geneva Conservatory to get closer to his musical passion: the works of J.S. Bach.

At the same time, he devoted himself to another passion: jazz music, which he began to devour between two fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Around the same period, as part of a kind of “love challenge,” Alain Guyonnet studied the transverse flute for three years, later abandoning the instrument due to lack of time, but also because he had “lost” the muse who inspired this challenge…

A little later, he approached jazz teaching without much conviction at first, preferring at the time to play music rather than teach it. However, over time, he gradually discovered the value of this discipline both for others and for himself.

He then developed his own way of teaching jazz, focusing more on developing the ear than on theoretical understanding, to put it simply.

To this end, he published three small works: 

• “A quarter note is worth two sharps”* (rhythmic solfège)
• “Blues vocabulary”* (a collection of typical blues phrases presented in three different keys)
• “6 little blues for little hands”* (piano solo)

The teaching positions Alain Guyonnet has held include:

• AMR Geneva (big band director, workshop leader)
• CPM (leader of a jazzy children’s choir: the JECC, meaning Jazz-En-Culottes-Courtes — see JECC CDs on this site)
• EJMA Lausanne (formerly)
• Private lessons (jazz piano, composition, arrangement)

But a large part of Alain Guyonnet’s work concerns the composition and arrangement of jazz music.

Realizing early on his limited instrumental technical abilities granted by nature, one fine night Alain Guyonnet decided to dedicate himself to musical writing.

“What I can’t achieve with my little fingers, I will write, and others will play…” he decided at that moment.

And so it was.

To date, 475 compositions and arrangements have been put on paper, mostly orchestrated for large ensembles (some examples of this work are available on the site).

In another domain, Alain Guyonnet proudly claims to “have several lovers at once…”

Music, of course, but also the French language — that wonderfully elusive courtesan whom he sometimes tries to seduce, perhaps clumsily, but with almost forbidden pleasure.

(See texts, short stories, aphorisms)

Final anecdote:

At the birth of his first daughter, Alain Guyonnet decided he should “do something,” however small, “for the world into which this little being has just arrived.”

Armed with this noble thought, he managed to get elected to the Geneva City Council on the Green Party list, accomplishing a particularly absurd feat for a citizen: to go suddenly from an abstainer (he had hardly ever voted before) to an elected representative of the people…

But naturally, the legislature of the time remembered little of the presence of such a politically unrefined artist, and Alain Guyonnet ultimately preferred to return to his lifelong passion: teasing the natural sign.