From a violent French sect to residing on the streets of Los Angeles, the United States, to the prime of the music charts, pianist Riopy’s unbelievable journey is the epitome of the concept that music can save your life.
The 38-year-old – whose actual identify is Jean-Philippe Rio-Py – wrote the rating for award-winning movies The Shape of Water and The Danish Girl, spent three weeks at the prime of the US classical charts in January, and is streamed by tens of millions round the world through meditation and yoga apps.But it has been a onerous highway to success, worthy of a fantastical movie.
“I had some dangerous luck that reworked into a possibility,” he advised AFP in Paris.
That is kind of an understatement.
The “dangerous luck” was a sect in the Deux-Sevres area of western France, the place he was raised by his mom together with two brothers and two sisters.
He confronted beatings and different types of psychological torment that left their mark in the type of an obsessive compulsive dysfunction and power melancholy.
The guru who ran the sect banned all music and tv however the younger Riopy discovered an deserted piano and was capable of educate himself to play.
Despite his tough previous, Riopy has launched a trio of profitable albums since 2018 and discovered nice success as a composer for movies.
“To say that music saved me is a cliche, nevertheless it’s true,” he advised AFP.
“They would put me on a chair and inform me: ‘Don’t transfer’. It lasted hours and hours. I beloved to make up rhythms in my head that I later transferred onto the keyboard.”
Change of luck
Today, Riopy doesn’t like to debate the particulars of the sect, however he fled dwelling at 18 and had no contact along with his mom for the subsequent 17 years.
He discovered himself residing tough in Paris earlier than heading for Los Angeles – chasing the American Dream, as he put it.
“But the nightmare continued. I used to be cleansing bathrooms in trade for a mattress. I ended up on the streets. A priest tried to rape me.”
Giving up on the US, he ultimately discovered himself in Reading, a city exterior the British capital, and it was there that his luck lastly started to alter.
Someone heard him taking part in in a piano retailer and supplied to pay for his research on a modern music course in Oxford.
From there, he settled in London and started to gig in piano bars.
“My music was so cinematic that it labored nicely in pubs,” he recalled.
A British movie producer, Nick Saunders, heard his music on-line and supplied to signify him as his agent.
Soon he was taking part in in a few of the ritziest venues in the metropolis and choosing up promoting gigs for the likes of Ikea, Samsung, and an Armani spot that was considered greater than 10 million occasions on YouTube.
A surreal full circle was achieved one night time when he was invited to play at a dinner organised by Vanity Fair and met Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay.
Impressed by his taking part in, Martin supplied to purchase him a piano of his personal – a second that had specific resonance for Riopy.
“When I used to be 18, earlier than going to LA, I used to be on the streets of Paris, in the snow. And I used to be crying and listening to the album Parachutes by Coldplay,” he mentioned.
Back from the brink
Although his life appeared to have taken an unbelievable flip of excellent fortune, Riopy remained crippled by the demons of his previous.
“I used to be suicidal. I drowned it in alcohol and medicine,” he recalled.
Yoga and meditation helped pull him again from the brink and his profession continued to blossom. He has launched a trio of profitable albums since 2018 and discovered nice success as a composer for movies.
His darker moods are extra beneath management and he says he can lastly take pleasure in life.
“I’ve the likelihood to reside from my music, to have a spouse that I really like and two little infants, and to have the ability to share my music with a large variety of folks,” he mentioned. – AFP
