Pierre Hurel, The Improviser

For nearly 20 years, Pierre Hurel’s improvisation workshop at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee has been a cornerstone for musicians looking to expand their artistry. As the workshop approaches its 20th anniversary, Pierre reflects on his journey from performing on stages with is trio to shaping the next generation of musicians. In this episode, he shares how his early experiences in jazz led him to a career in both performance and education, the evolution of his teaching philosophy, and what makes his workshop a unique space for artistic growth. From navigating the unpredictability of the arts to inspiring students to take creative risks, Pierre offers insight into a life dedicated to music, mentorship, and the pursuit of expression.

About Pierre Hurel: Born in Paris, pianist and composer Pierre Hurel was first discovered by Paris Jazz Conservatory’s founder and director Charles Henry. At age 20, as he was about to reluctantly start a career in business, Hurel decided to change course and enrolled at the School of Modern Music in Paris. Six months later, he came to Boston for a summer session at the Berklee College of Music and has remained here ever since. Hurel has been featured numerous times on New England Cable News and his music has been played on WGBH, WERS, WBUR, WMBR, Paris Jazz, Europe 1 and France inter, among others. He has recorded eight albums. Hurel is a regular at the Regattabar in Cambridge, and has appeared at numerous Jazz festivals including the Nice and Toulon Jazz Festivals in France, and Jazz clubs including the Duc des Lombards in Paris, the Knickerbocker in New York and locally at Sculler’s and Ryles Jazz clubs, among others.

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Heart to Hustle is for those who believe their passion can become their purpose. Every Tuesday, we share stories from people who’ve turned their hustle into thriving careers. From creative sparks to business breakthroughs, we are diving into what drives them, how they made it happen, and the challenges they’ve overcome along the way. It’s not just about what they do—it’s about why they do it and how they’ve shaped their lives around their passions. Tune in for inspiring stories, unexpected lessons, and a whole lot of hustle. Because when passion meets purpose, incredible things happen!!

Chapters

• 0:02 The Journey From Heart to Hustle
• 12:32 Exploring Art and Life's Beauty
• 26:07 The Artist's Essential Tools and Qualities
• 33:57 Embracing Beauty Through Art and Music

Transcript

Layla Palmer: 0:02

Have you ever had a side hustle, a side gig you picked up for fun or maybe to earn a little extra cash? Maybe you had a lemonade stand as a kid or, like me, were fully immersed in the world of theater and dance, where each experience ignited my passion for the spotlight. As we transition from those early experiences into the professional world, some side gigs evolve into real passions and sometimes even lasting careers. I've always been so curious about these stories, especially the less conventional journeys that redefine what a career can look like. They remind us that success isn't always a straight path and that the heart behind our hustle can lead us to unexpected and fulfilling destinations. I genuinely love exploring how other people's passions have shaped their careers. If you're into that too, join me, layla Palmer, as I chat with a captivating lineup of guests from various industries to uncover how they went from heart to hustle.

Layla Palmer: 1:14

Salut Bienvenue. Cette semaine, nous allons entendre mon prof, pierre Harrell, qui va nous parler de sa vie de musicien de jazz. Whoa, sorry, I don't know what got into me. Let's start this again. Hi, welcome back. This week we're hearing from Pierre Harrell, a jazz musician, music improvisation instructor and my French professor. If you couldn't tell, pierre is a Paris native, originally from the 7th arrondissement. He came to Boston years ago as a student, drawn to the captivating world of jazz. Lucky for us, he stayed well beyond his academic journey and I had the chance to sit down with him in person to pick his brain about life as a musician and artist and, well, about life in general. Our conversation got pretty philosophical, but that's only fitting when talking about the arts. I won't spoil too much. So without further ado, voici Pierre Harrell.

Pierre Hurel: 2:15

I'm Pierre Hurel. I came from Paris many, many years ago to study in Boston and I liked it so much that I never left. And I still live in Boston, and I'm a pianist, composer, arranger, producer. But I'm also an artist. I paint and I'm also a teacher, which is ironically how we met. But a lot of these activities that I do in my life have to do with communication and giving. I would say giving music, giving knowledge if you're teaching, sharing your paintings, and so I think a lot has to do with you know, the human interaction, the act of giving and sharing.

Layla Palmer: 2:57

Well, you mentioned that your life spans music and teaching and painting and all these creative things. So what's that one thread that really connects them all?

Pierre Hurel: 3:09

The thread. It's not always easy to see the light and understand what it is, but I'm suspecting that the thread is a desire to express something. I think from a young age I was always a very sensitive person. My mother used to say tu es très sensible, peut-être trop sensible. You're very sensitive, maybe too sensitive, which of course I didn't like. But looking back, I have to admit that my senses were always very active. So I, you know, I smell. I love to smell like wine, fragrance, the seasons. I love the winter, the smell of the winter. I love, of course, the fall, I love cooking, but I also love to touch, you know, I know the difference between wool and cashmere, and you know what I mean. Or silk, I just, I think, all my senses, I'm a very visual person, but I'm also hearing details.

Pierre Hurel: 4:05

Music is my primary language of expression. So I think the common thread may be this sort of hypersensitivity that had to find outlets. When you're very sensitive, everything touches you in a profound way, and if you do have an outlet, you can then translate, or try to translate, what it is that you have been feeling, noticing, sensing, into some art form, and I think that's what attracts me to the arts in general, when I go to a museum, I see primarily my fellow humans having had an opportunity to express themselves, to express something they observed. Like you know, like philosophers we're all philosophers, we're all thinkers. We feel things very deeply and the lucky ones have an outlet and they can express it. And I think that is probably the common thread is the idea of expression is very important.

Layla Palmer: 5:03

Yeah that you have such a way with words. Thank you, so you mentioned that you were from France. You moved here to come to school, so where did you go to school?

Pierre Hurel: 5:15

I went to Berkeley.

Layla Palmer: 5:16

Oh, okay, makes sense. Yeah, that's right, makes sense.

Pierre Hurel: 5:18

And it's kind of interesting because I went to Berkeley as a summer program and I was young. So when you're young, you sometimes, sometimes you can be a little bit arrogant, or at least the concept of time is foreign to you as a young person. And so they had a summer program and I thought, well, I'm going to go to Berkeley one semester and I'm going to figure out everything that I need to figure out about music. And at the end of the summer program I called my parents in Paris and I said well, you know, if I could stay, maybe one more semester, I think with two semesters I'll be done, I will know everything. And, long story short, I went all the way and I continue to study music. I'm still studying music and I think that's one of the great great things about the arts.

Pierre Hurel: 6:02

You, one of the great great things about the arts is that you never stop learning, you never stop. You never stop because the medium changes, but you change too. And this is something I really did not realize when I was younger is the notion of cycle, just like the seasons. Or when my wife was pregnant, noticing how her belly would change, and after nine months our baby was born and he was totally awesome and you know, with the little nails and everything. And I think life is full of these little moments, these cycles, you know. So when you're young, sometimes you think you know you're done. This is me. I believe this. I don't believe that I want to do this and it's lovely to have convictions, but you know, what I knew about music then has nothing to do with what I knew even five years ago, 10 years ago, but also, as I was saying, not because the medium changes, but your perception changes. You know, you change as a person.

Pierre Hurel: 7:00

When I see people around me, I can see where they are in relation to the movie of life. You know, some just entered the projection room and they're about to sit down, some have been sitting for a little bit and they're eating their popcorn and some are halfway through the movie. Some are getting very close to the end and some are done. The movie just kind of ended. They are maybe retired, maybe they don't seek the magic of life anymore. I hope it never happens to me, but I just think we go through all these cycles. For me, the realization that the study of music is endless, absolutely endless, is something that I didn't know, when I was young I thought you study something, you sort of crack the nut, you figure it out, you get to the bottom of things and then you're done. Then you start touring or making a living from it and everything. But over the years I realized that's not really how it happens. Fine, welcome to life, you know. Welcome to believing in something and betting on something.

Layla Palmer: 8:09

You heard Pierre. He's been in Boston for quite a while. I've only been here for a few years, but I've always loved immersing myself in the live music scene. So I asked Pierre about the jazz clubs in Boston and, without realizing it, I walked right into a history lesson on the city's jazz scene. What started as a conversation about where to catch live jazz quickly turned into a reflection on the clubs that once defined Boston's nightlife, many of which are now just memories, as the city's fascination with the genre has faded over time. On the topic of jazz, I cause I have to ask what do you think of Wally's Jazz Club? I've never been on Mass Ave.

Pierre Hurel: 8:51

Yeah, yeah, you know I haven't been in years. I never played there because they didn't have a piano. It's a very authentic place. It became in the South End this sort of hip because it was like this real, the real thing Back in the 80s. It was not like that. Back in the 80s it was more like a real jazz club like the 1369 in Cambridge or Riles, you know like these were just jazz clubs. They were still an interest. Riles doesn't exist anymore, 1369, a lot of these clubs actually closed.

Pierre Hurel: 9:23

So jazz, you have to accept it for what it is. Jazz is not a popular form of expression. If I walk around Berkeley I could find 10 people who know about jazz and they know this performer, that performer, they know who was playing the bass on this record and who was the drummer. They are really excited about it. But that's not representative of real life. Real life is that most people don't listen to jazz. They don't really care about it. But that's not representative of real life. Real life is that most people don't listen to jazz. They don't really care about it. Some people think that jazz has become too intellectual, too complicated and, starting in the 50s, jazz starts to become far less commercial Jazz used to be like you're a young person. If you were a young person in the 20s and you went dancing with your friends, you were listening to jazz. That's the what, that was, the music.

Layla Palmer: 10:09

That's what I still look for today to go out dancing. Love it, but I'm not into the vibe of the music these days. I like something more that I can like actually groove and yeah, yeah, move my body, yeah. So I definitely gravitate for jazz. I listen, listened to jazz when I studied oh wonderful, yeah.

Pierre Hurel: 10:27

Okay, well, you're one of the few people who carry the torch of this great. I mean, it's such a rich form of music. You know we always talk about classical music. I'm really into classical music. My students are mostly classical musicians at the conservatory and I listen to classical music all the time and I play classical music.

Pierre Hurel: 10:45

But jazz, which is profoundly different although you could say music is music, but profoundly different from classical music, is such a rich form of expression punctuated by true geniuses, creative people like people like Charlie Parker, john Coltrane, thelonious Monk, amazing, amazing geniuses. You know the, the music they have left behind. We call them standards, jazz standards, and everyone is playing them to this day. Everyone is recording them and it's funny because we call them standards, but they're less and less standards for people because they don't know. You know jazz musicians be like. We should close with a well-known tune like a well-known jazz standards. You can go along, you can say, sure, that's famous, but it's famous for for who? For you know people who, who lived in the 60s maybe, but it's no longer really a tune that and that people would know. So it's kind of funny how that has changed as well.

Layla Palmer: 11:42

I met Pierre in the fall of 2024 when he taught my French class Easily one of the best experiences I've had learning a foreign language. But teaching French is just a side gig for him, his main focus leading classical improvisation classes at the Boston Conservatory at Berkeley. In fact, his classical improv workshop is coming up on its 20th anniversary. Let's hear more about how it all started and what has kept it thriving for two decades. So why don't you talk about your teaching? You teach an improvisation workshop that is coming up on its 20th anniversary Congratulations.

Pierre Hurel: 12:21

Thank you.

Layla Palmer: 12:21

So why don't you talk about that?

Pierre Hurel: 12:24

I'm very happy to talk about this. You will have to stop me if I talk too much about it Because in 2004, I was already teaching at the Boston Conservatory. I was teaching French. There, I was teaching a French course to singers. Singers have to study Italian, german and French because they need to sing the repertoire, the classical repertoire, and I give them a proposal around 2002, a proposal to do an improv workshop to teach improvisation. And I did it because I was hanging out with a lot of classical musicians. My wife is a classical pianist and I noticed that classical musicians had the heart, the chops, the desire, but somehow they would rather die than be asked to improvise anything because they're so used to preparing things.

Pierre Hurel: 13:20

Score, you open it, you look if you're a pianist, you check the fingering okay, with your pencil and eraser okay, on this, a flat, I'm gonna do. I think I'm gonna do three and then four, then one. Like you really think of the details, details, details, and it's a wonderful art form, but you don't spend any time improvising, which is ironic because the composers who wrote these pieces of music that they're playing today the Chopin, the Mendelssohn, the Liszt, the Bach, of course, mozart, beethoven, all these people, all the way to the 20th century. People like Ravel or Debussy all these people were great improvisers, so composers were improvisers. But somehow, in the mid 1800s, more or less musicians started to pursue the art of playing other people's music without being themselves composers, and so they were not improvisers because those skills were not needed. Give me the score, I will learn it. I have the chops, I have the intelligence to figure out what's going on and I will play it. But back in the day it was less perfect in a way, the playing was less perfect in a way, the playing was less perfect. But in any case, I thought I should do it. It would really change their life and it did. That's really what happened.

Pierre Hurel: 14:28

I started in 2004. I had one section. Then very soon I was given two sections, right now, four sections. In September we're going to have five sections. The classes fill out very quickly. You need to send a permission request because I need to give you permission, because I have only 10 students, so I need to make sure that I don't have, you know, nine flutists or eight violinists. So I'm trying to have at least one percussionist, a couple pianists, some string players, maybe brass like trumpet, trombone, some woodwinds to make a coherent group. In fact, last night I closed the semester. I was talking after a class with students.

Pierre Hurel: 15:05

What we really discuss on paper, we discuss non-idiomatic improvisation, which is improvisation that doesn't belong to a particular idiom, like French is an idiom, english is an idiom, but Baroque is a medium and romantic music is an idiom. You have certain rules for different styles. So what we're trying to do is like you play, you pull out your flute and this person pulls out a smaller instrument, maybe a bass, and you're at the piano. How do you improvise? Out of thin air? You never rehearsed it, you never discussed it. Very different from jazz, very different from jazz. You never rehearsed anything. How do you make music? I was talking about expression, I was talking about communication.

Pierre Hurel: 15:52

When you study non-idiomatic improvisation, you really study the art of listening.

Pierre Hurel: 15:59

You talk, so you believe in what you have to say, and then you listen to the other person. So for my young musicians it's a life-changing experience because it makes them think about the music, but it also makes them think about the purpose, like why do we do these things? Why do you make music? What is the point If you overplay somebody, if you play too loud or too much, you overwhelm the other person. Is that really fun for the other person? I'm going to guess not at all If you underplay.

Pierre Hurel: 16:30

If you're, so, it's not that you're respectful, but you're almost. You don't believe in yourself enough, you don't stand up for yourself enough. That's not good either, because the other person is like give me something, talk, place, do something. So you start to work on the psychological dimension of making music with others, which makes you a much better player. You start to really think about why are we doing this right now? And also you start to become more aware of others and you learn respect In French, le respect In Latin, spéciré, to see, réspéciré is to see around.

Pierre Hurel: 17:07

So to be respectful is to see around, to realize that there are other people around, that you should acknowledge the existence of other people. So when you play with other musicians, you really want to be hyper aware of others, because it's the group that matters. And how can you be a good group member is really what we're studying. It's the class I wish I had when I was their age. It's a class where you're asked to play, but you're asked to think, you're asked to articulate your thoughts, because you see, we play and then we critique.

Layla Palmer: 17:43

Our conversation didn't just stay within the realm of music. Pierre spoke about something much deeper the importance of acknowledging the pleasure of life itself. He connected this idea to improvisation, explaining that, just as a musician must be fully present and aware of what's happening around them to improvise with others, we too have to be present in our own lives to truly experience its beauty. What started as a discussion about music turned into a reflection on life, art and the simple joy of being in the moment.

Pierre Hurel: 18:16

It's an incredibly interesting art form to study improvisation, and I do that also in my work as a painter. My work is really abstract, expressionist. It's not figurative, so you won't recognize what you're looking at. But if you allow yourself to observe and to sort of feel the vibrations between the colors, you may feel something. For me, this is the kind of artwork that touches me the most. When I was a teenager, I was into surrealism, I was into impressionism in my late teens, but now this has been for many, many years. The type of art that moves me the most is abstract expressionism. It corresponds to a particular sensibility that I have and the freedom that you have because you're not looking at an animal or a steeple or a woman. You know. You're not looking at things you would recognize. You're just looking at a combination of shapes, colors, contrasts, forms and you look at it. And if you let yourself go, if you relieve yourself from the imaginary responsibility that it has to make sense, that it has to represent something, then you can really feel things very deeply. Actually it's really wonderful.

Pierre Hurel: 19:30

My mother would say when she would look at my work. She would say qu'est-ce que ça représente? What does it represent? And of course it doesn't represent anything because it is not figurative, it's not an apple, it's not anything. It's colors, shapes, contrast and all these things. But if you ever find a painting of that type of that style of painting that moves you, it really connects you with the magic of life. You don't even know why you're so moved by painting.

Pierre Hurel: 19:59

Motherwell was one of the great abstract expressionists, american, robert Motherwell, and he was one of the leaders of the movement. They used to have a painting at the MFA that I would go see almost weekly, pretty large painting, blue black line, very, very simple. But, as luck would have it, there was a little bench in front of it and I would go straight to the American wing of was a little bench in front of it and I would go straight to the American wing of the MFA, to the top floor, and I would sit there and it was sort of a meditation on looking at this painting. I can't really tell you what it, why it was moving me so much, because it's.

Pierre Hurel: 20:33

I don't know the answer, but it connects you to all these things in life that you can't quite explain. You know, things move you in a particular way Taste, visual things, things you hear. It's a very personal thing. Why is it that this movie so did it for you and doesn't do anything for this other person? It's one of those things that we can't really explain, but it's kind of magic and magical, rather, and it's just, it's kind of beautiful, I think. Yeah.

Layla Palmer: 21:02

You're right, it's definitely like an inexplicable thing. You can't describe in words the feeling.

Pierre Hurel: 21:08

That's right, it's almost like love like you're so in love, and you love someone or something so deeply that you don't even have the words to describe that it's funny you would use the word love, because I'm so with you on this Sigmund Freud, soon before he passed away, when he was asked. You know you have listened to a million people talk, you have analyzed a million things dreams, conversations. What have you learned? What is what, would you say? And his words? Well, it was translated from German, but loosely translated. He said love and work, those two things.

Pierre Hurel: 21:45

And as I get older I can see what he meant, because when you think of love, you could think of romantic love, but you could also think of loving life loving a good meal, loving to cook, loving to hold hands with a person, loving to go for a walk. There's a way of being engaged with the world. But you have this moment of acknowledging the magic of life which never stops to amaze me. And it's funny because I was raised as a religious person, I was raised as a Catholic, but I moved away from it in in my 20s, like some people do. But there are many times today when I'm still completely amazed, blown away, as they would say, by the magic of life, the beauty of life, the magic you know when they see nature, fish, the colors, the birds forget it.

Pierre Hurel: 22:44

How is that even possible? This was this just came about like that. It's. It's completely amazing.

Pierre Hurel: 22:52

Music, cuisine, life is just completely magical. I mean, it's just. You may not see it because maybe you're wearing the wrong lenses or maybe the lenses you have built over the years are, I don't know, tainted to a point where you really don't see. You need to find a different pair of lenses or maybe put these down, which is not easy as you get older, I find. But if you have been constantly allowing yourself to be amazed by the magic of life, it really is. It's incredible. I mean, it's incredible the seasons, the fact that you can see, the fact that you can hear, you know all these amazing senses that we have and that you can share. So I think the word love that you mentioned I think love is love is a big part of it. I always feel like teaching is an act of love, making music is an act of love, cooking is an act of love. There's a lot of magic in life. If you remove the art, then we're really in trouble.

Layla Palmer: 23:53

I think about that all the time. Imagine a world without music or something as simple as the birds birds singing, you know when you're taking a walk. It does fundamentally change the human experience.

Pierre Hurel: 24:04

For sure, and it connects you with people who came before you. You know this is also something we're talking about cycles. You know this understanding of like. If you study cuisine, you're really standing on the shoulders of people who came before you, who invented this particular technique, this dish and everything In music. Same thing. You know you're never creating things out of thin air. People came before you and so you have the history of it, which also helps.

Pierre Hurel: 24:33

If you study the arts, you realize that you go through life pretty quickly. I mean, I used to hear this when I was a young person like you, and I don't think I understood it, but now I'm starting to really understand it. That life, really, you don't live forever. You're here and it's completely miraculous that we're alive. Don't get me started on that too. It's completely miraculous that you're alive, that somehow you survived, your parents survived all sorts of things that could have happened. Somehow you got a chance to live and if you're lucky, you fall in love with something, an art form, an activity. It doesn't have to be the arts, it could be anything. Really, I see life as this giant. You know these restaurants where you have all you can eat buffet. To me, that's life. Life is all you can do, all you can experience buffet-can-eat buffet. To me, that's life. Life is all-you-can-do, all-you-can-experience buffet. There's so much Beautiful.

Layla Palmer: 25:27

After a conversation that touched on music, creativity and the art of truly being present in life, it's clear that for Pierre, improvisation isn't just a technique, it's a way of living. But I wanted to learn even more about his journey, so I asked him to stick around for a few more minutes. It's time for the career countdown, A segment here on Heart to Hustle that offers us one last glimpse into our guest's journey in a fresh, inspiring way. Through five rapid fire questions, Pierre will share the creative inspirations and personal moments that have shaped his career and artistic path. Let's dive in. So let's start with number five. What are five tools or instruments and this could be literally or metaphorically that you can't live without?

Pierre Hurel: 26:17

And this will seem funny but a metronome. I have a really good relationship with my metronome. A tool that is a metaphor of a tool is meditation. I think meditation is very important, precisely because meditating is a great way to disconnect yourself from the narrative, the imaginary stories you tell yourself about the world, about yourself. So it's nice to empty your mind. Three, obviously my piano. I don't know what my life would have been without my beloved piano. When I was younger I was a tortured Parisian romantic. I would get my heart broken all the time. I don't know how many times the piano cheered me up and helped me go through life. So definitely piano Canvases and painting equipment or drawing equipment. If I couldn't draw, if I couldn't paint, I think life would be terrible. And the last one would be YouTube. I love YouTube. I cannot tell you how much I love YouTube.

Layla Palmer: 27:13

Wow, yeah, okay, an answer I wasn't expecting, but I can relate to yeah. Okay, so number four. What are four qualities that every great musician or artist needs to be successful?

Pierre Hurel: 27:27

The first one is tenacity. Resistance and go through resistance Like it's not easy. You have days where you could cry, you have days where you could get really discouraged. So tenacity is one of them. To have patience, to realize that you practice this today. You practice these two measures. They're not coming through. Quite well, it's Monday, you do it Tuesday. Look, it's a little bit better. Within a week you can really play them. So I think patience is one.

Pierre Hurel: 27:56

Three, be able to connect with others. You need to be able to pick up the phone or pick up you know your Gmail and send emails and send. You know you need to make these connections with people. For some it's very easy. For others, like me, it's very hard. I always find it difficult to sell anything. I could sell other people's work more easily, I would think, but to sell your own work is difficult. So definitely, ability to connect with others. And four, and it's very important is your ability to pay attention to details. If you meet directors, chefs, bakers, musicians, sooner or later you're going to start to notice the importance of details. If you're going to be sort of flying over the experience, you're going to wake up feeling like, how come I don't know this. How come I never noticed this? Because I think you need to really pay attention to details. Details really matter.

Layla Palmer: 28:57

So number three oh, this is going to be fun. If your life were painted on a canvas, what would be the three dominant colors and why?

Pierre Hurel: 29:06

So definitely black. Matisse, a French painter, was one of the most important painters to realize and teach us, people who came after him, the importance of black when you use other colors. Black is a way to punctuate different colors and to exacerbate the vibration between different colors. So black, you would have to have it, because I would want black, I would also want white. So definitely white would be one of them. The third one is difficult because I find that, again, going back to this notion of cycles, I think 10 years ago my response would have been maybe different from what it is. I am going through a sort of a reddish, pinkish period. But you know, a year ago I might have said blue, because blue is also one of my favorite colors when I was younger. Yellow, but see, now yellow and the pigment is getting close to red, to orange first and then red. So it's difficult for me to give you three exactly, definitely black, definitely white and at the moment red hues. Yeah, I would say number two.

Layla Palmer: 30:19

What are two roadblocks that you've encountered on your creative path that taught you something valuable.

Pierre Hurel: 30:24

Yeah, first one discouragement. I think it has taught me that you have to be persistent. Artists can be really self-critical, and even very famous artists, for example Bill Evans, very famous jazz pianist. His producer talks about Bill Evans and says I've never met someone who was more insecure than Bill Evans. And that tells you something, because to the outside world, with a few good photos like a lot of great photos of Bill Evans, you know, with the glasses hunched over on the piano maybe you would never imagine this to be the case. But the reality is that, yes, he was insanely insecure. He doubted himself. A lot of musicians doubt themselves, so I think the sense of self-doubt reminded me that you need to stay with it.

Pierre Hurel: 31:12

The second roadblock I hate to admit it, but I come to an age where I have to admit it is a lack of knowledge of the business of things, business of music especially. I think if I were to advise young people I would say it doesn't matter what you play. In fact, berklee has a lot of classes for the business of music. I think it's very important. You shouldn't be able to read a contract. You shouldn't be able to know how to protect your music, especially these days. Good luck. It's much more difficult now with the internet. So yeah, knowing the legal aspects of what it is, you do.

Layla Palmer: 31:48

So final question, number one if you could bottle your career as a vintage French wine, what would you name it and what would the label say?

Pierre Hurel: 31:59

Okay. So I had to think of this. This will surprise you. For a musician, I would probably call it, because I like the sound of it, Chateau. I would call it Chateau, why not? It would be like a great Bordeaux, maybe Chateau du Silence, which is counterintuitive, because why would a musician want to create a wine that would be called Silence, but actually one? There is silence in music. You have pauses and the music that comes right after has so much more power because there was silence before. But essentially, it's because there's some kind of wisdom that comes from being silent and from stopping the narrative in your mind and not talking, which is ironic because right now I'm being interviewed. So I'm doing all this talking. But I do like silence a lot, and it may be the reason why I love to paint, because when I paint I don't turn on the music. I paint in silence. You can just hear the brushes brush against the canvas. That's all you can hear. So, Chateau du Silence, that's all you can hear. So, Chateau du Silence In terms of description, I think I would put and we haven't talked about this, but I would put plaisir, confusion and clarté.

Pierre Hurel: 33:08

So pleasure, confusion and clarity. Pleasure, because I think that one of the primary forces, one of the primary motivators, is the pleasure the pleasure of connecting with the canvas, the pleasure of seeing your work when it's done, the pleasure of going through the process of creating work. And then I chose these two opposite or are they opposite which is confusion and clarity. I feel pretty clear about the fact that I'm confused at this stage of my life. I have accepted confusion, I've accepted that there are things you're not supposed to explain and in that sense I'm very clear.

Layla Palmer: 33:54

And that's a wrap on today's episode. I knew Pierre would have incredible insights on music and art, but I didn't expect to walk away feeling like I just had a philosophical awakening. He really has a way with words. Maybe it's the French upbringing, maybe it's the artist in him, or maybe I just got lucky enough to sit across from someone who sees the world through such a poetic lens a poetic lens. Either way, this conversation was a reminder that, whether through music, art or just how we move through life, being present, embracing the moment and acknowledging the beauty around us is what makes this experience of life so worthwhile. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. It really helps others find the podcast. And on that note, it's the end of the episode. We'll see you next week. Until then, thank you for listening.