Jean-François Côté
Composer

A self-taught keyboard player, composer and prolific electronic musician since the 80s, Jean-François Côté is very active on the L.A. music scene. He has also worked with many singers and groups from Quebec and elsewhere. He is known for mixing existing styles seamlessly with electronic music to invent new forms.

Jean-François was a promising hockey player as an adolescent, but he discovered his true calling at the age of 16 when he started playing keyboards with rock and R&B groups on the Montreal music scene, developing sounds and a style that were uniquely his own. At the same age he got a job as a security guard for the very first Cirque du Soleil show. “At night,” he recalls, “I would sneak behind René Dupéré's keyboard to make music and polish my technique.”

Years later Jean-François was playing keyboards for singer Julie Masse and was noticed by Cirque du Soleil composer Benoit Jutras. That encounter led to his first formal association with the company as Musical Director and Conductor for the Cirque shows “O” and Mystère. He also created the sound design for the Taiko drum sequence in the Cirque Imax film Journey of Man.

Jean-François says Cirque is one of the most stimulating environments in which to work as a composer. “In spite of its size, Cirque has remained true to its primary vocation: the creation of shows without any artistic compromise. The artistic freedom they give to the creators is unequaled.”

Jean-François Côté, who shared the composition with Scott Price, says he set out to bring a fresh approach to a time-honored theatrical legacy with the Banana Shpeel score: “It is, above all, dance music, with undertones that suggest an irresistibly exciting nightlife,” he says. “I wanted to create honest and unpretentious music that could be playful, lively and full of surprises. And I kept in mind all those street artists who embrace chaos every day, to excel and express their art in the face of adversity, as much today as in the vaudeville era of the 1920s and 1930s.”

Jean-François Côté was born in 1968 in Montreal.