I was born in a very small village in southern Germany. My father was a musician. He had studied the clarinet and piano in particular, and he was a renowned teacher of various instruments across the whole region.

I'm originally from Caen. My father, an actor by trade, had a passion for jazz. Thanks to my parents, I was lucky enough to attend many shows and concerts from an early age, which gave me a very early appreciation of live music. In fact, my grandparents on my father's side were amateur musicians. I started playing the recorder with my grandmother at the age of six. The elementary school where I studied, though small, had a special feature: two of our teachers were saxophonists, and they always gave a saxophone concert at the school fête. So, when I was about eight, I gave up my recorder for an alto saxophone.

I started playing the clarinet at the age of nine in a wind band in Turin, my hometown. At the time, the mayor had decided to organize music lessons open to all, to set up wind bands in every district of the city, and my parents signed me up. Initially, I wanted to play drums or saxophone, but the band leader said, "You've got a clarinetist’s lips, so clarinet it is!" I think he simply needed clarinetists to complete his line-up. But he did the right thing!

I began in learning music by playing with a group in Valence. When it came to choosing an instrument, I was immediately directed towards the bass clarinet. So, unusually, I started out on this instrument before learning the Bb soprano clarinet to complete my musical training in Spain.