Simply managing to stay alive until the ripe old age of 102 is impressive – releasing a new album after 102 years of playing the piano is superhero-levels. A feat that 107-year-old French pianist Colette Maze has just achieved.
Maze started playing the piano at 5 years old and has just released her sixth album at the age of 107.
“I always preferred composers who gave me tenderness,” Maze told NPR. “Like [Robert] Schumann and [Claude] Debussy. Music is an affective language, a poetic language. In music there is everything — nature, emotion, love, revolt, dreams; it’s like a spiritual food.”
The talented 107-year-old has accomplished many milestones in her life, as well as being a successful musician, she was also a teacher for nearly 20 years.
Maze’s 71-year-old son also spoke to the publication, sharing that some anecdotes about how she came to be a piano player.
“The problem is Colette was an artist in an excessively classic family that did not understand her, so she was completely isolated,” he says. “And despite that, she persevered and did take her destiny in hand. She did not want to be in conformity with the family tradition. She decided she was an artist, a musician, not a housewife, so she married the piano … to the detriment of all the social conventions of the day,” he told the publication.
“I always knew the piano — from morning to night — she was always at the piano. She sort of breathed through the piano,” he says. “And for me, it was important that she could record, to leave a trace — to leave a message,” her son added.
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Maze records her own albums at home with the help of a sound engineer, and her son revealed that she has spent almost 15 years recording, with very few breaks.
“Now she’s been recording for the past 15 years, and she’s left about eight hours,” he says. “It’s very precious. Now she’s existing through her piano, and her piano was her life.”
