Jean-Philippe Ryopi is a man like everyone else in France, the country where he was born. But in reality, the 38-year-old pianist is a huge star in the United States. This success, he owes it to his velvet hands that he lets wander on the keyboards for a few minutes. These songs, popular with yogis, also appear in the trailers of films such as Shape of Water or The Danish Girl, two feature films that won multiple Oscars. No one, and even less Jean-Philippe Ryopi, would have imagined such success for him. This Ryopi mania is a bit of his revenge on life, he who, until the age of 18, belonged to a sectarian movement in which he was enlisted by his mother. This dark time, he evokes it in the portrait that Release devotes to him this Thursday, February 17: “Above all, I play to feel good, even happyhe says. Failing to be able to recover one day all these shitty years of a stolen childhood“.
The name of the sect is not revealed but Jean-Philippe Ryopi recounts the daily life suffered for fifteen long years. On a daily basis, the pianist details “bullying and frustration“, “the grip of a guru“, the “physical abuse“, “mental persecution” : “‘in the name of God’, we spy on the slightest actions and gestures of others“is it written. Jean-Philippe Ryopi was, like all children, forbidden to speak”except adults“and especially that of pronouncing the word”mom“.
Jean-Philippe Ryopi also had to for hours “sitting on a chair, doing nothing, which caused him to develop OCD, which has never been abandoned since“. The 38-year-old musician has a mania for “count absolutely everything, symmetrically“. This disorder did not prevent him from falling in love with the black and white keys he had under his nose in the “jail” from which he finally freed himself. Jean-Philippe Ryopi today savors his regained freedom, his happiness with his wife and two children and his anonymity in France, where it all began for him.