"The piano was my first instrument: a distant but indelible dawn and assuredly a source. Its malleability, its inexhaustible profusion of colours, characters, and nuances, set off scintillating sparks." – Jean-Pierre Leguay

Jean-Pierre Leguay has won numerous prizes for organ, improvisation (organ, piano) and composition (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris) as well as at the international competitions of Lyon, Haarlem (Laureate), Nice, Erding (Germany), and the Paul-Louis Weiller Prize for Musical Composition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts – Institut de France .

Jean-Pierre Leguay, after having held the position of organist at the church of Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Paris from 1961 to 1984, was titular organist of the Grandes Orgues of Notre Dame Cathedral de Paris from 1985 to the end of 2015, thereafter emeritus. He taught organ and individual and collective improvisation at the Conservatoire National de Région de Limoges from 1968 to 1989 and then at the Conservatoire National de Région de Dijon from 1989 to 2003.

Internationally recognised as an organist-concertist, composer and improviser – on the organ, on the piano and in groups – Jean-Pierre Leguay pursued his threefold career well beyond the borders of France (Europe, Canada, the United States, Asia). He is frequently invited by French and foreign radio stations, academies, universities and conservatories.

The pianist Sabine Sauer has a longstanding friendship with Jean-Pierre Leguay. In December 2014, he sent her the edition of the piano cycle Allume l’aube dans la source, published the same year. Fascinated by the way Leguay exploits the sound possibilities of the piano, she began to take a close interest in his music. In 2015 and 2016, she had already included some pieces from the cycle in her concert programme. In 2017, she organised a portrait concert as part of the Musik am 13. series in Bad Cannstatt, during which Leguay himself improvised on the organ and where she gave the German premiere of further parts of Allume l’aube dans la source. In 2020, the year of the premiere of Envol, the idea matured to record all piano works composed by Leguay that had not yet been recorded. Inspired by their fruitful collaboration, Jean-Pierre Leguay composed the new piano piece Momenti in the summer of 2022, which is dedicated to her. All recordings of this edition took place in the library hall of the Ochsenhausen monastery in the presence of the composer.