Alain Jean-Marie is a pianist from Guadeloupe who has worked in Paris since 1973 and is counted among the most sought-after accompanists in French jazz, as well as a trio leader and, when he chooses, a soloist. He was born on October 29, 1945, in Pointe-à-Pitre, to a Martinican father and a Guadeloupean mother. A neighbor gave him a few piano lessons at the age of eight, after which he taught himself. He discovered bebop on the radio, bought Benny Goodman's records with Teddy Wilson as his first album, and listened to Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet. As a teenager he played the all-night dance halls of Guadeloupe, in the orchestra of Robert Mavounzy and alongside the clarinetist and saxophonist Edouard Mariépin, and at about fourteen he hid behind the piano so that his father would not see him on the bandstand.

From 1967 to 1970 he lived in Canada. He was invited to Montreal to play at the Terre des Hommes world's fair, met many American musicians there, and his playing turned more clearly toward jazz. With the bassist Winston Berkley and the drummer Jean-Claude Montredon he formed a fusion group called Liquid Rock. Back in the Antilles around 1969 and 1970 he met the record-shop owner and producer Henri Debs, who went on to produce many of his records. His first recordings, from 1969, are piano biguines for Debs with a rhythm section of Tony Faisans, Jobby Dandelé and Serge Landre.

He moved to Paris in 1973, found it hard at first to get his own group heard, and joined the house orchestra of La Cigale, where Guadeloupean musicians played. When the venue closed in 1975 he turned to the jazz clubs, notably L'Opportun, and began accompanying a long list of visitors and residents: Chet Baker, Sonny Stitt, Art Farmer, Johnny Griffin, Lee Konitz, Max Roach, Harry Edison, Clark Terry, James Moody, Kai Winding, Archie Shepp, the trumpeter Bill Coleman, the tenor saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, the trumpeter Charles Tolliver and the guitarist Christian Escoudé. In 1979 he received the Prix Django Reinhardt of the Académie du Jazz and recorded the trio album Grand Prix Django Reinhardt 79 for Debs with Gus Nemeth on bass and Al Levitt on drums; Riccardo Del Fra later took over the bass chair.

The 1980s and early 1990s tied him to a series of American and European partners. He worked often with the saxophonist Barney Wilen, whose album La Note Bleue (1987), the soundtrack to a comic book by Loustal, he played on and with whom he made the live duo record Dream Time, taped at the Cully festival in Switzerland in March 1991. He recorded Latin Alley as a duo with the Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen in December 1987. In 1986 and 1987 he was the musical director of Dee Dee Bridgewater's Billie Holiday tribute Lady Day. In 1990 he played on Abbey Lincoln's The World Is Falling Down, with Jackie McLean, Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden, and in 1991 on the bassist Henri Texier's The Scene Is Clean, with Aldo Romano on drums.

In 1992 young Guadeloupeans asked him, at a time when he was no longer playing Antillean music, to record a biguine album, since the form had been largely forgotten since the arrival of zouk. The result, Biguine Reflections (Karac, recorded in March 1992 with Eric Vinceno and Serge Marne), began a series that ran to Tropical Blues in 2013. His solo album Afterblue (Shaï, recorded in August 1998 at Ircam) earned the Prix Boris Vian of the Académie du Jazz, and in 2000 he received the Django d'Or as best French jazz musician. The trio record Lazy Afternoon (Shaï, 2000) paired him with the bassist Gilles Naturel and the drummer John Betsch. From 1999 he has also played in duo with his wife, the singer Morena Fattorini, and the two were in residence at the Théâtre de la Vieille-Grille in Paris from 2008 to 2011; their album Abandon à la nuit appeared in 2010. He made six records with the guitarists Boulou and Elios Ferré, beginning with Intersection in 2002, issued the duo albums Portrait in Black and White and Oiseaux de nuit (2004), both taped in 1991 with the pianist Michel Graillier, and in 2009 released Gwadarama, a tribute to the music of Guadeloupe that includes gwoka and zouk, styles he had rarely played.

In 2012 he was named a Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite. The trio album Tropical Jazz Trio (2019), with the bassist Patrice Caratini and the drummer Roger Raspail, won the Académie Charles-Cros "Coup de cœur Jazz et Blues" in 2019, and Interplay: The Music of Bill Evans, a duo with the bassist Diego Imbert, won the Prix du disque français of the Académie du Jazz in 2020. A duo set with Wilen, Montreal Duets, was issued in 2020. Archie Shepp presented him with the Victoire d'honneur at the Victoires du Jazz in 2021, and in 2022 he became an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Créole Promenade (2023) draws on songs by Creole composers, and in 2025 he released the duo albums Con Alma with the pianist Mario Canonge and Ballads with Imbert. A 52-minute documentary by Bertrand Fèvre, Alain Jean-Marie, impressions cubaines, filmed in Havana in 2024, follows him recording an album of Latin American boleros at the EGREM studio with Omara Portuondo and Roberto Fonseca and playing a piano duo with Chucho Valdés in Paris. He taught himself to read music only in his seventies, and in March 2026 he was still performing, with his Be Bop Trio of Gilles Naturel and Philippe Soirat at Ivry-sur-Seine.

Jean-Marie is a bebop pianist at the center of his work, with a delicate touch, flowing phrasing and an even, unforced rhythmic drive that French critics have praised as swinging without heaviness. He holds that jazz and the Antillean biguine are cousins: he points out that the phrasing of the New Orleans Creole clarinetists recalls that of Antillean clarinetists, and he calls Robert Mavounzy and Al Lirvat great biguine musicians who were also great jazzmen. He began by arranging Lirvat and Mavounzy themes in a jazz setting and, in the Biguine Reflections series, wrote new pieces that fuse the two. His early listening ran from Teddy Wilson to Miles Davis, Coltrane, Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Largely self-taught, he built his reputation as an accompanist in Paris clubs and studios, and the 1979 Prix Django Reinhardt, the 2000 Django d'Or and the 2021 Victoire d'honneur mark the standing of a pianist who is more often heard beside other leaders than in front of his own band. The French press has called him a "very discreet legend". Biguine and Antillean music remain a major strand of his repertoire, but his body of work, his sideman credits and his awards are those of a jazz pianist, so no separate world-music tag is given here.