Henri Texier is a Paris-born double bassist, composer and bandleader who has been a fixture of French jazz since the early 1960s. He was born on January 27, 1945, into a modest family of Breton origin settled in the Batignolles quarter of Paris; his father laid track for the railways and his mother took in sewing. He began piano at eight and disliked the lessons, heard boogie-woogie through an uncle, and at fourteen played in a Dixieland group with friends. Records by Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers turned him toward modern jazz. At sixteen he took up the double bass, teaching himself, and he names Wilbur Ware as his main influence.

In 1962 he joined the group of Jef Gilson, and he recorded with that band on Enfin! (1964) and, with the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, Oeil Vision (1964). In the Paris clubs of those years, Le Chat qui pêche and the Blue Note, he accompanied visiting Americans, among them Chet Baker, Bud Powell and Johnny Griffin. In 1965 he formed a group with Georges Locatelli, Alain Tabar-Nouval, Jean-Max Albert and Klaus Hagel, inspired by Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman; English Wikipedia calls it one of the first expressions of free jazz in France, though few recordings survive. He also co-founded a short-lived band with Enrico Rava, Michel Portal, Jacques Bolognesi, Locatelli and Aldo Romano. In 1966 and 1967, around his military service, he played with René Thomas, Lee Konitz, Dexter Gordon, Hampton Hawes, Dave Pike, Slide Hampton and Art Farmer.

From 1968 to 1972 he was in Phil Woods's European Rhythm Machine with George Gruntz, Gordon Beck and the drummer Daniel Humair, which recorded Alive and Well in Paris (Pathé, 1968) and a live album from the Montreux festival (MGM, 1970). In 1970 he and Romano founded Total Issue, a psychedelic folk-rock group whose album appeared on United Artists in 1971. His own first records came in 1976 and 1977, Amir and Varech, on which he worked alone with oud, flute and bombarde alongside the bass. The late 1970s also brought a string trio with the violinist Didier Lockwood and the cellist Jean-Charles Capon, and from 1979 a trio with Humair and François Jeanneau that recorded Akagera. In 1977 the Académie du Jazz gave him its Prix Django-Reinhardt, the prize for the French jazz musician of the year.

In the 1980s he led a quartet with the guitarist Philippe Deschepper, the trumpeter Éric Le Lann and Bernard Lubat, then with Deschepper, Louis Sclavis and the drummer Jacques Mahieux, the band behind La Compañera (1983). From the middle of the decade his own albums appeared on Label Bleu. At the 1987 Festival du Mans he played with Dewey Redman, Kenny Wheeler and the 38-member Bagad de Quimperlé, a Breton pipe band, and in 1988 he put together the Transatlantik Quartet with Joe Lovano, Steve Swallow and Romano. In the early 1990s he formed Azur, first a quartet with the trombonist Glenn Ferris, the pianist Bojan Z and the drummer Tony Rabeson, which recorded An Indian's Week (1993), with Louis Sclavis also credited on clarinet and soprano saxophone and Michel Portal on bandoneon on two tracks. The Académie du Jazz gave Prix Boris Vian awards to the 1988 album by Eric Barret, Romano and Texier, to An Indian's Week in 1993 and to Mosaïc Man in 1998. Texier also helped found the Union des Musiciens de Jazz in the early 1990s and co-founded the collective Zhivaro, which mixed happening, musical theatre and free improvisation.

The trio with Aldo Romano and Louis Sclavis made three albums about Africa, inspired by the photographer Guy Le Querrec: Carnet de routes (1995), Suite africaine (1999) and African Flashback (2005). In 2001 he was named a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, and in 2003 he created the Strada Sextet, which recorded (V)ivre (2004) and Alerte à l'eau (2006). An Indian's Week, Sky Dancers (2016) and An Indian's Life (2023) form a trilogy on Native American themes, and in 2016 the Académie Charles-Cros gave him its Prix in Honorem for his career, on the occasion of Sky Dancers. In 2019 he shared the Victoires du Jazz honorary award with the singer Gregory Porter. His recent records include Sand Woman (2018), Chance (2020), Heteroklite Lockdown (2022), a trio album with his son, the saxophonist Sébastien Texier, and the drummer Gautier Garrigue recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown, and Healing Songs, recorded in Amiens in June 2025 and released on Label Bleu in November 2025. In 2022 he also published À cordes et à cris, a book of interviews with Franck Médioni that serves as his autobiography. At 81 he is still touring, with dates at the Triton in Les Lilas listed for December 12, 2026.

Texier builds his music on sound, tempo and enthusiasm, in the words of French Wikipedia, with a taste for song and melody and a physical, singing bass tone that Jazz Journal's reviewer singled out in 2026 as one of the main assets of Healing Songs. His language grew out of the hard bop and modal jazz he heard as a teenager, passed through the free jazz of Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman, and opened early onto folk and world traditions: Breton music and its pipe bands, African rhythms and the cultures of the Americas run through his titles and his bands. French Wikipedia presents him as a representative of a French jazz that does not depend on American roots. Wilbur Ware is the bassist he credits as his model. His named bands, Azur, the Strada Sextet, the Hope Quartet and the Sky Dancers sextet among them, have carried his compositions from the 1990s onward.