Suffering from a rare liver disease, the self-taught pianist died on Saturday, June 29 at Necker Hospital in Paris. His gift, discovered through social media, had led him to record two albums.
The young pianist and singer from Marseille Mourad Tsimpou died on Saturday June 29 at the age of 19 at Necker hospital in Paris. Suffering from a rare liver disease, the young man was discovered by a video filmed in 2018 and posted on Twitter by another patient in the corridors of the Timone hospital in Marseille where we see him playing Chopin. Having become viral, the video attracted the attention of songwriter André Manoukian, who asked to meet him. Senator Samia Ghali, who has since become deputy mayor of Marseille, is in turn mobilizing to allow the teenager to have his own instrument at home. This will be accomplished thanks to the donation of a large digital piano from the owner of a downtown music store. Spotted for his musical ear in primary school by a singing teacher when he was only 10 years old, Mourad Tsimpou learned most of it on his own thanks to tutorials on the Internet and took a few lessons at school. music school of Pennes-Mirabeau in the suburbs of Marseille but he is one of those musicians who approaches the instrument without reading a score, by simply memorizing the notes on the keyboard. A gift that led him to record two albums, Beginnings in 2019 where he covers classics on which he improvises but also contains original pieces with free-jazz tones. Two years later, he released the album Little brother where he begins to sing to tell his story, notably in the opening song, Mourad : “I spent more years in trouble than years in the spotlight… everything in my head, I play Beethoven in a tracksuit.”
“Marseille, his city, pays tribute to him”
Mourad plays at the Stade-Vélodrome on November 29, 2019, before the start of the match on the 15th day of Ligue 1 interpreting Jump by Van Halen on the piano to greet the entry onto the field of the Olympique de Marseille team which is preparing to play against Brest. He will be in the spotlight again in a stadium, two years later, to perform at the opening of the Top 14 final between Toulouse and La Rochelle at the Stade de France, in June 2021. The mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, expressed his emotion upon learning of the early death of the young artist: “Marseille, his city, pays tribute to him. My thoughts go out to his family and loved ones in this very difficult ordeal.” Second child of five siblings, Mourad Tsimpou will be buried in the Comoros where his family comes from.
