Jef Gilson, born Jean-François Quiévreux on July 25, 1926 in Guebwiller in Alsace, was a French pianist, clarinettist, arranger, composer and big band leader who also ran a recording studio, a record shop, a jazz school and one of the most important independent jazz labels in France. He passed away on February 5, 2012, at the age of 85. His music went through four distinct phases: bebop-rooted big band writing in Paris in the early 1960s, modal and free playing, a Madagascar-inspired ethno jazz at the turn of the 1970s, and, from 1973, the productions of his own label, Palm. He had little commercial success while he was active. The reissues that began in 2011 have since made him a reference for collectors of European modal, spiritual and free jazz.

He trained as a classical clarinettist. During the German occupation of Paris he played clarinet with Claude Luter in a group led by Boris Vian, and in 1947 he switched to piano, continuing to play with Vian and with André Hodeir through the late 1940s. French Wikipedia says he studied composition with Hodeir and counts him among the first French composers to turn away from New Orleans jazz toward bebop. The big band of Dizzy Gillespie made him want to lead one himself, and the track "Je me souviens encore du grand orchestre de Dizzy Gillespie en 1948" on a later live album keeps that memory. Bandcamp Daily reports that he took the name Gilson as a nod to the arrangers Gil Evans and Gil Fuller.

Alongside playing he worked as a sound engineer, a record seller and, from 1962 to 1966, a critic for Jazz Hot. He ran a shop, Le Kiosque d'Orphée, on the rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and built a small studio in its back room where he recorded Vian and the American multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Miller; The Wire adds that he spent about two decades as a professional engineer with his own studios. The earliest records under his own name are the 1960 EP Jef's Blues on the Kiosque label and the Jef Gilson Septet with Lloyd Miller, issued by Spirit Jazz, whose first side was recorded in Paris in December 1961 and whose second side, according to the release credits, holds a session from October 1958 with the saxophonist Bobby Jaspar, the bassist Doug Watkins and the drummer Art Taylor.

From 1963 he led a succession of big bands that became a workshop for younger French players. Musicians who passed through them include Bill Coleman, Bernard Vitet, Jean-Louis Chautemps, François Jeanneau, Michel Portal, Bernard Lubat, Henri Texier, Ivan Jullien and Jean-Luc Ponty, as well as Lloyd Miller. The records of these years are the big band EP Vol. 1 (1963), Enfin! (Disques du Club de l'Échiquier, 1964) and Œil Vision (1964), with Ponty on violin and Chautemps on tenor saxophone. In the spring of 1965 the American trumpeter Woody Shaw and the saxophonist Nathan Davis played and recorded with the orchestra, and the same year Gilson joined the vocal sextet Les Double Six as a singer, later serving for a time as its musical director. In April 1966 a nonet with Chautemps, Jeanneau and Lubat recorded New Call from France at the Saba studio in Villingen, in the Black Forest; it came out on Saba and was later reissued on MPS. By then he was removing parts of the harmonic framework from his writing, moving toward free jazz, and Jazz Hot ran an article in January 1968 titled "Jef Gilson rejoint l'avant-garde". Over the same years he also wrote religious music: Jazz pour Dieu with the trumpeter Bill Coleman (1966), Louez Dieu (1967) and Messe pour les Halles de Paris (1971). In 1969 he arranged and played piano on an LP for Vogue billed to Philly Joe Jones with Gilson and his ensemble.

In 1968 Gilson went to Madagascar, and he made further trips there until 1970. He met young Malagasy jazz musicians, among them the saxophonist Serge Rahoerson, and encouraged them to build jazz on Malagasy culture and instruments such as the sodina flute and the valiha. The material was recorded between 1969 and 1971, partly in Madagascar and partly in Paris after he came back to France in 1971 with Malagasy musicians. It came out in 1972 on Lumen as Malagasy and was reissued in 1973 as the first release on his own label, Palm. Rahoerson's piece "Avaradoha", on that album, became an anthem of the 1972 youth revolt in Madagascar. The follow-up, At Newport-Paris (Palm, 1973), had Gilson on Fender Rhodes, and in 1974 he recorded Soul of Africa with the American tenor saxophonist Hal Singer.

Palm, founded in 1973, stood for Productions Artistiques Littéraires et Musicales. It was a musician-run label, and Gilson's stated policy was to release only new and indispensable music. Its original series ran to about thirty-two titles. Besides Gilson's own albums it released Byard Lancaster, Khan Jamal, Baikida Carroll, Jacques Thollot, François Jeanneau, André Jaume, Jean-Charles Capon, Philippe Maté, Butch Morris, Frank Lowe, David Murray and David S. Ware, whose From Silence to Music, taped late in 1978, closed the series. Gilson also edited the information bulletin L'Indépendant du jazz from 1974 to 1980, co-founded the Centre d'informations musicales jazz school in Paris in 1976, and wrote the harmony treatise L'Harmonie du jazz, published by Palm in several volumes between about 1978 and 1981. His own large orchestra of the period, Europamerica, recorded the album of that name for Palm (PALM 28, 1977) at a Radio France concert at Cardin on December 23, 1976, with Butch Morris on cornet and Chautemps, Jeanneau, Jaume and Maté among the saxophonists; he received the Prix Boris Vian in 1978. At the end of 1981 Jean-Pierre Graziani's Vendémiaire label reissued the Palm catalogue, and no new original productions by Gilson followed.

Later records are fewer: Pages d'écritures (1982) with the flautist Chris Hayward, Occitania (1989) with the Big Band de Nîmes, which he directed, and Les Touches Noires (1997) with his Jazztet. He lived in seclusion in the Ardèche in his last years and taught harmony at the Centre d'informations musicales. The Jazzman label brought out The Best of Jef Gilson in 2011, The Archives in 2013 and the box Gilson et Malagasy in 2014. Souffle Continu has reissued Le Massacre du printemps (2020), Malagasy and At Newport-Paris (2021) and Workshop (2022), and in 2018 the Palm Unit band recorded Hommage à Jef Gilson for Super-Sonic Jazz.

Gilson wrote for large ensembles from the start, and the elements that recur in the early records are changing tempos, bitonal layers and chromatic themes, which French Wikipedia traces from his bebop beginnings through a gradual removal of harmonic function between 1964 and 1966. His influences, as the sources describe them, were Gillespie's big band, Hodeir's compositional thinking, and the arranging of Gil Evans. Discogs files his best-known records under modal, spiritual and free jazz, and the Malagasy albums under ethno jazz and Malagasy salegy, with the sodina, valiha and Malagasy rhythm sections giving them a sound different from anything else on the French scene of the time. He was equally a producer and a teacher: Palm released records by French and American free and modern players, and Bandcamp Daily credits him with launching the careers of Ponty, Portal, Lubat and others. Sources agree that the commercial breakthrough he hoped for did not come in his lifetime.