Alain Marion (25 December 1938 – 16 August 1998) was a French flutist, and considered one of the world's best

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

players of the late twentieth century.

Biography

Marion was born in Marseille on Christmas Day 1938. He studied at the Marseille Conservatoire under renowned flutist Joseph Rampal, and gained the award ''premier prix de flûte'' when he was only 14. He later studied with Rampal at the Conservatoire de Paris (where he eventually became a professor), and gained fame after winning a prize at the Geneva International Music Competition. In 1964, the French national broadcaster Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française appointed Marion as first flutist, and later to the Orchestre de Paris. In 1972 he became a soloist for the Orchestre National de France. He joined the chamber orchestra Ensemble InterContemporain in 1977, working with

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...

. He taught every summer at the ''Académie internationale d'été'' in Nice, becoming director in 1986. His stature was able to attract some of the world's best musicians to the organisation as teachers, including Jean-Pierre Rampal, Jessye Norman and Henryk Szeryng. Marion played a gold flute, made by the Sankyo Flute Company of Japan, and encompassed a wide variety of different musical styles. However he expressed a special admiration for the great

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

flutist-composers, as well as for the Czech composer

Bohuslav Martinů Bohuslav Jan Martinů (; December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959) was a Czech composer of modern classical music. He wrote 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. He bec ...

. Marion died of a heart attack while on tour in Seoul, South Korea, aged 59.

References

External links

Photographs of Alain Marion
at the Académie Internationale d'Eté in Nice, 1968, 1970 & 1974 {{DEFAULTSORT:Marion, Alain Musicians from Marseille 1938 births 1998 deaths French classical flautists 20th-century classical musicians 20th-century French musicians 20th-century flautists