For Jacky Terrasson it wasn't initially a matter of music. It was, he insists, a case of true love for the instrument itself - the piano which happened to share the family home in Paris. Growing up in the early 1960s, he first heard his father playing classical music, and later, when his mother's record collection introduced Nat Cole, he began to mess around himself - hammering out blues and boogie on that same family piano.
Once he had heard Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Bill Evans, however, he was completely hooked and realised that music was about to be his life. At the age of 15, after performing an impressive medley of Ellingtonia, he was accepted into the LycΘe Lamartine and for the next few years he combined his studies of classical and jazz.
"I had a great teacher at the lycΘe," he says, "and I knew it was good to get as much experience as I could get. It was great for me and I still use elements from that, and I still practise classical music at home. But what pulled me away from classical music is that I missed the rhythmical elements and the improvisational factor. I wanted to work with music that wasn't written."
And so, while the lycΘe gave him the very best grounding in history and theory, Terrasson began to explore his other side. Paris was a city with a historic reputation for jazz - it had been a haven for several US musicians who had made it their home, and it was also a city traditionally open to experiment of any sort. But for Terrasson, it was never quite enough.
"At that point, I didn't have any other places to compare it too. But, yes, I thought there was a pretty decent scene. Kenny Clarke used to live there, and Chet Baker, and there were always people coming by and playing in the big clubs. But I guess I had felt a little isolated, wanting to check out Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, and there were not too many people my age who wanted to study that music. Everyone was into disco. But then later, I met people who knew about jazz - but not too many. Not many people in my environment were excited about it. So the place to be for me was really New York. That's all I had in mind."
But Paris was, for Terrasson, a fortunate city in which to begin his musical career. One of his closest friends at the lycΘe was Stephane Paudras, whose father, Francis, was an old friend of Bud Powell - a relationship recreated in the movie Round Midnight. He was among those who spotted Terrasson's early talent and he encouraged him to apply for Berklee College of Music. By 1985, Terrasson was in Boston playing alongside his classmates, Danilo Perez, Javon Jackson and Dennis Carroll.
"I was around other people my own age who were excited by this music and were serious about it. That was the best thing for me. It was stimulating, and at that age, because competition is strong, it makes you practise more. And that's all I did for a year. I just stayed in one of those boxes and practised."
After a year at Berklee, Terrasson joined his friend, Dennis Carroll, playing for five nights a week in Chicago, gathering vital performing experience and learning more in a short period than he had in all those academic hours. It was an exciting time but it was interrupted when he was summoned back to France to do national service. His duty done, he settled in Paris and soon made a name for himself, playing with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Guy Lafitte, Barney Wilen and Ray Brown. It was all fairly high-powered stuff but he still believed New York was the only place to be. Before long, he was perched at the bar in Bradleys, listening to Kenny Barron, Cedar Walton and Barry Harris.
"It was really exciting. That was 11 years ago when I moved to New York City with a one-way ticket. It was quite overwhelming too because I was just starting to play with some really good musicians in Europe, so moving to New York was like starting from scratch again.
"But I kept in touch with Barney Wilen and Guy Lafitte and so I would come back to Europe every three and half months and make enough money to survive on pizza for another two months in New York. So, I began sitting-in everywhere I could, trying to be heard and then because of word of mouth, people started talking about what was going on."
Within a year Terrasson was playing with Arthur Taylor - a gig he views as his first big break in the US. He then formed his own trio with Leon Parker and Ugonna Okegwo and made his first recordings for the Venus label. When his old Berklee friend, Javon Jackson, invited him to perform on an album which happened to be produced by Betty Carter, Terrasson suddenly found himself playing in her band - his first gig with the legendary singer coming the day after the won the 1993 Thelonious Monk Competition.
He was soon the talk of the town and major record companies began to circle. "I would say there were some pressure then. There was a lot of hype when I won the Monk competition and I was solicited by two or three major labels. I didn't know what that whole world was about and I had to get a lawyer and all that stuff, so it was kind of confusing and I had to think about a lot of things outside the music."
In 1994, Terrasson made his first recording for Blue Note Records and he was firmly established as one of several young artists most likely to succeed. One of the tracks on that first album, Cole Porter's I Love Paris, has now been revisited on his latest - ┴ Paris - a collection of what he describes as French standards. It is usual practice in jazz to raid the great American song book, but here Terrasson is trying something different and, on the face of it, perhaps a little odd.
"Why always go and pick in the same bag? Yes, jazz history is from the States but I think it's good to expand the limits in any way we can. I think there's a great history and sense of melody that comes out of French composers. I think a lot of these songs, or chansons, have nothing to envy in the great American standards - and what is a standard anyway?
"These are French standards and I'm sure Ireland's got its standards too. Of course, I would never do something with a song unless I felt I could do something valid with it. But the melodies are very strong and once you have that very important element, you can't really go wrong. The general process is just the same as I would approach anything."
Perhaps the greatest pressure on the younger jazz musicians today, whether they feel it or not, is that soon they will be the only prominent jazz musicians. As their elders either pass on or settle into rehashing the hits, it's becoming increasingly obvious that jazz is in the hands of young musicians such as Terrasson.
Many jazz fans anticipate a major crisis but they also take comfort in the fact the Jacky Terrasson, and others like him, know exactly what they're about.
"I know what I'm not about - and that is: just playing, taking a solo, trading with the drummer and all that. It's been done by so many greats but it's not of my time. I like to take the song and try to make it my own and have something original come out at the end.
"Something hummable, singable and catchy. I think the more of that we can get in our lives the better. I like the challenge and the fun of transforming a tune - like transforming La Marseillaise into a waltz - but I don't want to make it unrecognisable. It's fun but the challenge is to make it sing.
"I feel that if I stick to my thing and my musical beliefs and identity, that it will lead me in the right direction. I think you have to be very careful about concessions. Honesty is very important to me and if you start selling yourself, then you lose track of who you are, and then you end up very unhappy. But yeah, things have been good."
Jacky Terrasson plays Vicar Street, Dublin, on June 30th as part of the ESB Jazz Series