Born in Paris in 1960, Jean-Michel Pilc worked as a rocket scientist before becoming a full-time musician. Self-taught, he was a jazz devotee by age 8, which is when he first heard Bix Beiderbecke.

After building a respectable musical career in Europe, Pilc arrived in the US in 1995 and soon signed on as musical director with Harry Belafonte (who wrote the liner notes for Pilc's 2002 Dreyfus debut, Welcome Home). To date, Pilc has played with such greats as Roy Haynes, Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, Jean Toussaint, Rick Margitza, Martial Solal, Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Marcus Miller, Kenny Garrett, Lenny White, Chris Potter, John Abercrombie, Lew Soloff, and made recent sideman appearances with Ari Hoenig, Sam Newsome, Rosario Giuliani, Richard Bona and more.

But Pilc's accomplishments as a leader have garnered the widest praise. The legendary critic Dan Morgenstern chose Pilc's masterful Cardinal Points as a top-ten album of 2003; Jazz Times enthused that it "should be studied in every music school in the galaxy." Pilc's follow up, the solo piano Follow Me, was one of Howard's Reich's top 2004 picks in the Chicago Tribune. 

Andrew Durkin of All About Jazz wrote: "Pilc leans towards a comprehensive pianism, ably expressing — on a single instrument, no less — so much of what has made jazz, fascinating, problematic, or inspiring over the last hundred years."

"Beyond all that can be said about his masterful technique and his beauty of touch, it is the unpredictability that is central to his remarkable talent. As one listens to each selection, be they vintage or newborn, one is taken into his world of improvisation where the unexpected is constant." — Harry Belafonte

"The right hand runs of jazz pianist Jean-Michel Pilc are enough to send shivers up your spine, but this Frenchman is about more than chops. His densely harmonic reinventions of standards you thought you knew clearly shows a musical genius at work." — Eric Brace, The Washington Post