He still loves Duke Ellington and jazz clubs but has also made his mark as an actor: Michel Jonasz, 77 years old with nearly 60 years of career, returns with a play, an album revisiting his great successes and a tour in 2025.
“I always wanted to pursue two careers at the same time, singer and actor. I took drama lessons before doing music,” the man nicknamed “Mister Swing” told AFP.
“There is not a huge difference between acting and singing. Brel was a real actor on stage, too, in embodying his songs.”
“Diversity allows me to never get bored,” he confides, remembering that evening in December 1960 – the year he was 13 – when he was captivated by the acting of actor Daniel Sorano in a retransmission of “Cyrano de Bergerac”.
Equally fascinated by the heyday of Golf-Drouot – a former “temple of rock” in Paris – Michel Jonasz was given an electric piano by his parents by drawing on family allowances. He quickly created a group, “Le King Set”, of which he was the singer with blues accents with, on guitar, his childhood friend Alain Goldstein.
In 1967, they were spotted by producer Lucien Morisse. Under his leadership, the musician will go solo. The first big success, “Super nana”, did not arrive until 1973.
However, the artist has not forgotten his dreams as an actor by taking his first steps in theater, cinema and TV at the same time. He has been in the casting of around fifty films and series such as “Family of Host”, “Boulevard du Palais”, “Scènes de households” and “Le Négociateur”, of which he has just shot a new opus.
– Tour with Ben l'Oncle Soul –
On the stage, Michel Jonasz triumphed for two years with “Abraham”, alone on stage about his Polish Jewish maternal grandfather, before “Life is an Apple Pie”, an autobiographical theatrical fantasy.
Currently, on the stage of the Théâtre Edouard VII in Paris, he shares, with Patrick Timsit, François-Xavier Demaison, Claire Nadeau and Kate Morvan, the poster for a bittersweet comedy by Samuel Benchétrit, “La Famille”, evoking a dysfunctional family faced with a vital decision.
“Between unsaid words and misunderstandings, brotherly love is ultimately at the heart of this piece that is both funny and moving,” summarizes the actor and singer.
In stores since October, his 19th album covers his greatest hits in a soul version, with surprise guest Ben l'Oncle Soul, who will join him on a few dates of a tour with a stopover at the Dôme de Paris, in November 2025.
Despite the success, the artist assures that he has always kept his distance from fame.
“I'm not someone you recognize in the street. It's actually something that I like. I just want to do my job,” he says, still amused that a TF1 team doesn't see him. not identified during a report on gasoline shortages last year.
“The journalist was young,” puts the person concerned into perspective. “The editorial staff apologized to me but I didn’t have to receive one!”
On the other hand, thanks to an unconditional astronomer fan, the asteroid 27949 in the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was officially named “Michel Jonasz” in 1997. “I sometimes look at the sky and say to myself that a celestial object bears my name… It’s still very special!”
