Éric Le Lann is a French trumpeter and composer from Brittany who has been a fixture of the Paris jazz scene since 1977. He was born on November 4, 1957, in Plœuc-sur-Lié, in the Côtes-d'Armor, and his father, a dentist and amateur trumpeter, started him on the instrument. He left Brittany for Paris in 1977 and worked first as a session player for variety acts, among them Bernard Lavilliers, the Gibson Brothers and Henri Salvador (in the big band of Eddy Louiss), while spending his evenings in the jazz clubs. His first record, Jazz Côte Ouest, was made in April 1978 with the Jazz Group de Bretagne at La Potinière club in Morgat, and in 1979 he won first prize at the Concours national de jazz de la Défense.

In 1980 he joined the quintet of the pianist René Urtreger, with the bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark, the drummer Aldo Romano and the saxophonist Jean-Louis Chautemps, who recorded En direct d'Antibes that year. He also played about sixty dates with Salvador and joined the first quartet of the bassist Henri Texier, with Bernard Lubat on drums. In 1981 he gave a series of concerts with the American baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, entered the Onztet of the bassist Patrice Caratini and joined the big band of Martial Solal, where he became the principal soloist. In 1982 he formed his own quartet with the pianist Olivier Hutman, the bassist Césarius Alvim and the drummer André Ceccarelli. It made Night Bird (JMS, 1983), and in 1983 the Académie du Jazz gave him its Prix Django Reinhardt. He was one of the musicians who made the name of the Sunset club on rue des Lombards, which opened in 1982, and he toured India with the trio of Daniel Humair, François Jeanneau and Texier.

In 1985 he appeared as a musician in Bertrand Tavernier's film Round Midnight (Autour de minuit), alongside Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock and Billy Higgins. He also began writing for the screen, scoring Didier Haudepin's Elsa, Elsa (1985) and Benoît Jacquot's Corps et biens (1986). His second quartet record, I Mist You, recorded in December 1985 with Hutman, Alvim and the drummer Tony Rabeson, followed, and in 1987 and 1988 Antoine Hervé invited him to solo with the Orchestre national de jazz. In 1989 he turned to jazz fusion with a group built around the guitarist Louis Winsberg and the drummer Paco Séry and recorded New York in that city in August 1989, with guests Mike Stern, the bassist Eddie Gomez and the percussionist Mino Cinelu. A year later, in June 1990, he made a record of songs by Édith Piaf and Charles Trénet with a 35-piece orchestra playing arrangements Solal wrote for him, conducted by Caratini, with a quartet of the pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, Jenny-Clark and Ceccarelli.

Cap Fréhel (1992), an electric record with the saxophonist Lionel Belmondo, Pilc and the bassist Richard Bona, led to tours of West Africa, Eastern Europe, southern Africa and Israel between 1992 and 1995, and to a documentary by Valérie Stroh, Éric Le Lann à la trompette, which followed him on the African leg. In 1996 he began playing with Archie Shepp after a first meeting at the New Morning club, and they recorded Live in Paris at the Petit Journal Montparnasse. The same year he made the duo record Trois heures du matin with the pianist Michel Graillier and led an Acoustic Quartet with the pianist Éric Légnini, the bassist Rémi Vignolo and the drummer Jean-Pierre Arnaud, recorded live at the Duc des Lombards as Today I Fell in Love. From 1998 he also worked in duo with Solal, and their concert at the Jazz à Vannes festival in August 1999 became Portrait in Black and White (2000), which won a Diapason d'Or. He was a featured soloist on Solal's music for Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs (2000) and on Salvador's comeback album Chambre avec vue.

In 2000 he founded the École de création musicale, a music school in Brittany that opened at Lohéac and moved to Dinan in 2003. In June 2001 he received the critics' grand prix for the best stage music of the year for his score to 54 x 13, a play by Jean-Bernard Pouy performed with the actor Jacques Bonnaffé. A project joining Breton music and jazz, first played with 25 musicians at the Festival Interceltique de Lorient in August 2002, became the album Origines (2005). In July 2003 he was the guest soloist at Jazz à Vienne for Gil Evans's arrangement of the Concierto de Aranjuez, and he was featured at Jazz in Marciac a month later. He followed Origines with a duo record of Antonio Carlos Jobim pieces with the guitarist Jean-Marie Ecay, played in Solal's Newdecaband (its album Expositions sans tableau, on Nocturne, was recorded in December 2005 and issued in 2006), and made Le Lann Top (2007) with the bassist Jannick Top, the guitarist Lionel Loueke and the drummer Damien Schmitt, a mix of acoustic jazz, rock and electronics. In New York in October 2008 he recorded with the pianist David Kikoski, the bassist Doug Weiss and the drummer Al Foster.

I Remember Chet (Bee Jazz, 2013) paid tribute to Chet Baker in the trumpet, guitar and bass format Baker favoured late in life, with the guitarist Nelson Veras and the bassist Gildas Boclé. Life on Mars (2015), a quartet record with Paul Lay on piano, Sylvain Romano on bass and Donald Kontomanou on drums, won the prize of the Académie Charles Cros. It was followed by Mossy Ways (2017) and a duo record with Lay, Thanks a Million (2018). In 2022 he published an autobiography, Scorpion ascendant Belon, which Frémeaux & Associés reissued in an expanded edition in 2025. His daughter Lola Le Lann is an actress. He was still performing in Paris at the end of 2025, when the Sunside club listed him as a guest of the pianist Jacky Terrasson's trio for December 28.

He cites Louis Armstrong and Clifford Brown as his references on the trumpet, and the French press has long described him as a synthesis of the approaches of Miles Davis and Chet Baker: a lyrical, melody-first line and a fondness for ballads. Asked which musician he admires most, he names Martial Solal, who has described him as a rare musician whose ideas keep surprising him. His own quartets of the 1980s played acoustic, swinging post-bop in the American manner, and he has moved between that idiom and electric jazz fusion (New York, Cap Fréhel), orchestral song settings (the Piaf and Trénet record), Brazilian music, Breton music with choir and singers (Origines) and, in Le Lann Top, a blend of jazz, rock bass and electronics. Writing in Jazz Magazine in 2007, its editor-in-chief Frédéric Goaty counted Night Bird and New York among the best jazz records made in France. His honours include the Prix Django Reinhardt of the Académie du Jazz (1983), a Diapason d'Or for Portrait in Black and White, the critics' grand prix for stage music (2001) and the Académie Charles Cros prize for Life on Mars. Much of his work outside jazz is for the screen and stage, but his recorded body of work as a leader and as a soloist in other leaders' bands is overwhelmingly jazz.