Gelas was trained as a classical pianist since early childhood and graduated from University of Provence Aix-Marseille I. However, he decided to stop playing the piano at 16 because the "way of studying music in French conservatory was not what I was looking for".
He stopped music for four years and decided to visit to China to study Chinese language and culture.
"I was living in a Chinese calligrapher's house in Nanjing and there was a piano. I started to play it again and I felt at the time I was a new person. I felt that I could do what I wanted to do to compose music," recalls Gelas, who also obtained his PhD in Chinese philosophy from Paris' Sorbonne University this year.
"I am interested in the way Chinese philosophers think about the body and the link between the body and consciousness," he says.
Gelas travels to China every year with his Chinese wife, Liang Liwen.
Besides music, he is interested in theater thanks to his father, who is a renowned French theater director. Growing up, Gelas watched a lot of performances that inspired him to become an artist.
In March, he directed a play A Streetcar Named Desire at Nanjing University of the Arts in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.
The 1947 play by Tennessee Williams starred 10 sophomore students from the university.
"Sometimes I play music like a theater man, and I direct theater like a musician. These two different art forms are always exchanging places in my head," he says.
If you go
7:30 pm, Jan 5. Minzu Theater, 49 Fuxingmennei Dajie, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-8319-5319.
