Events launched by the association
"Les amis de Jean-Pierre Couprie"
A special tribute concert
to Jean-Pierre Couprie
by Bruno Brel
Friday, 30th April 2010 at 8 pm
theatre municipal Rene Ledieu
in Cateau-Cambrésis
Bruno Brel met Jean-Pierre Couprie in Thionville at the opening of the first cultural centre baptized “Jacques Brel Cultural Centre”. A true and long term friendship came out this encounter of two enuine artists. In fact Jean-Pierre Couprie is the artist who illustrated Bruno Brel’s first novel, "Le touareg blanc".
Extract of the tribute concert : "Le petit peintre"
"This song is not a description of Jean-Pierre Couprie’s life".
Jean-Pierre and I often discussed the difficulties we respectively faced as artists. Jean-Pierre talked about painters that he met and who had financial issues at the end of the month. We were more or less in the same situation. Luckily we were always surrounded by close friends who could support us until we became professionals. Actually we were professionals from the start, only the others did not know about it, particularly the banker. We talked about those topics for hours and hours.Obviously all that comes out of this type of discussions sounds more like two soliloquies confronting each other. Three days later, he was painting a new work, and I was writing a text.
There is a part of Jean-Pierre Couprie in each novel I wrote. This guy taught me to look at the light where I did not see it. I certainly gave him some things in return.He said that it was not normal that this job took place in this way, that some painters have a very relative talent, which is only a testimony of sales persons ... while others are starving.
That’s why I wrote “Le petit peintre” (“The little painter”). The story of this little painter is not that of Jean-Pierre Couprie, this is a story inspired by Jean-Pierre Couprie. This song was written by the two of us.
Bruno Brel
