Yann Benoist


Yann Benoist is a French session guitarist, performer, singer, composer, conductor, and arranger.
WWW yannbenoist.net

Early life

Yann Benoist was born in Dinan, Brittany. At age 8 his parents enrolled him in a music academy. They bought him his first guitar when he was eleven and he started learning to play with friends and different teachers.

Career

When Benoist was 18 he started playing and singing, juggling time between school and gigging with some local bands in Brittany and Normandy.
During 1975 he worked with the Switzerland duet. The next year, he learned for a while with Pierre Cullaz in Paris.
By the end of the seventies he was a member of the quartet. They won the first prize at in 1978. That same year he got a certificate from the Berklee College of Music.
Since then he has worked on stage or sessions for commercials, TV movies, TV shows,
and musical comedies, with a lot of numerous French stars such as Renaud,
Gilbert Becaud, Serge Lama, Patricia Kaas, Mireille Mathieu, Richard Bohringer, Jean Guidoni, Sylvie Vartan, Sheila (singer), Hugues Aufray, Jean-Luc Lahaye, Julien Clerc, Dave (singer), Patrick Hernandez, Lucky Blondo, Nancy Holloway, Marcel Azzola, Sacha Distel, Murray Head, Maurane, Marie Myriam, Francis Cabrel, Smain, Dorothée, Gilles Servat, William Sheller, Jacques Loussier, and Michel Legrand.
In 1983 he was a member of Space,
with Didier Marouani, for the first big tour organized in the USSR. They performed 21 concerts in Moscow's Olympic Stadium, Leningrad's Saint-Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex and Kyiv's Palace of Sports for about 600,000 people, and in 1992 they performed the first concert authorized on the Red Square in Moscow, for 360,000 people.
In 1989 and 2002 he was musical director for Sheila at the Olympia. In 2011 he was conductor for Joel Prevost at the Alhambra.
He was involved in all Version of "Envoyé Spécial " on TV from 1990 to 2016
He is a composer for APM Music and Universal Publishing.

Selective discography

As a leader

Bye Bye Femme Rainbowcity Décalage

  • ''Hard Groove ''

As a sideman

Videos

DVDs

As a leader

Rencontre d'un Soir : Martin Taylor (guitarist), Iwan B

As a sideman

Composer

  • 1983 Alliance
  • 1987 Bye bye femme
  • 1997 Rainbowcity
including :Gilbert Bécaud B+B Composer Yann Benoist Lyrics Pierre Delanoë / Manny Curtis

Movie TV scores

  • 1979 Les Joyeuses Colonies de vacances
  • 1982 On s'en fout on s'aime
  • 1990 Envoyé spécial Envoyé spécial
  • 1992 Les Taupes-Niveaux
  • 1993 Envoyé Spécial Envoyé spécial
  • 1994 Jeanne
  • 1996 ''La Guerre Des Poux''