Jérémy Rebotier is in Marseille when he responds. Not far from the Château d’If, where the Count of Monte-Cristo was imprisoned. He spends a few days there during the MCM, the largest film music festival in France. He was certainly invited, having composed music for about forty films, including the Count of Monte-Cristo, a film by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, who adapted Alexandre Dumas’ book. A cine-concert is being prepared from April 11 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris.
On the phone, I first ask Jérémy Rebotier to tell me about his favorite moment in the music he created for Monte-Cristo. He mentions the excerpt titled “Le trésor”. It was the moment when he felt a kind of “ecstasy”, when he found those notes that resonate, those violins that respond. It was the baroque spirit he was looking for to accompany the image on the screen, when the hero Edmond Dantès, still desperate for having been thrown in prison on the day of his wedding with Mercédès, begins the search for the treasure.
He has filled 800 pages of music scores for the Count of Monte-Cristo
To write the music for the Count of Monte Cristo, Jérémy Rebotier worked day and night for a year. He composed a total of two and a half hours of orchestral music for the film. This represents 800 pages of scores. “You have to write quickly in general when you write film music. I have my studio, where I have my piano. I have my cello. I have my guitars. I have percussion instruments. I have a computer. And I let myself be completely carried away,” he explains.
“I believe that the idea of writing is to release the world, to lock oneself in one’s bubble. Personally, when I write, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I spend two, three hours, four hours. And at one point, I have a feeling, I say to myself, what I’m doing is the right thing, and I go for it.”
Sometimes, the notes and melodies come to him while walking down the street. “For example, the song that is sung in Monte Cristo: we have a song that is based on a Romanian poem, which is Haydée’s song. I spent my time when I was in the street with my iPhone singing as soon as I had an idea. And I would come back to my studio, and I would take the different melodies I had. I would sit at the piano, on the guitar, try to create the song with it. Suddenly, an idea, two ideas, three ideas. And in those three ideas, I say to myself, it’s the one in the middle that works, and I decide that’s it.”
“I discovered Mozart at 6, I needed to rebuild myself, I became passionate about music”
Jérémy Rebotier became a film music composer somewhat by chance, but music changed his life when, as a child, he had just become an orphan. “I lost my mother at 2, I lost my father at 6. And at 6, after listening to Ennio Morricone from 4 to 6 years old, I find myself being raised by my aunt who was a music teacher in Mulhouse; she was a piano and cello teacher. She would teach me piano between classes. I wanted to learn the cello but she said, ‘no, you are too small, you will learn when you are older’. In fact, I was immersed in music from 7 to 10. I discovered Mozart at 6, I needed to rebuild myself. I understand that there is a real construction to be done in music. So, I become completely passionate about music and I think only about that.”
As a teenager, he picked up the guitar, was sent to boarding schools here and there, and began composing his first songs, listening to the Beatles, Bowie, and country music on repeat. One day, a friend who was studying at a film school asked him to compose for a short film, and Jérémy Rebotier dropped his math degree and thus became a composer.
Composer for Olivia Ruiz and Massive Attack
He has composed for Olivia Ruiz and the singer of Massive Attack. And for about forty films in total. The first one “Laissons Lucie faire!” was a feature film by Emmanuel Mouret in 2000. Among other films that particularly marked him are “Au plus près du paradis” by Toni Marshall in 2002. “Le prénom” by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte in 2012. “A propos de Joan” by Laurent Larivière in 2021.
Jérémy Rebotier prefers dramatic music over comedy. He describes himself as passionate and melancholic. In life, he wants above all to “try to be someone good, to be fair.” Jérémy Rebotier will soon celebrate his 55th birthday. Every day, he plays Beethoven on his upright piano. He composes between Paris and Belle-Île en mer, where he met his wife.
His latest composition, performed by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, is called Melancholia.
