Maurice Vander was a Paris-area pianist who accompanied Django Reinhardt and Chet Baker in the 1950s, led a trio at the Blue Note club in Paris, and spent about four decades at the side of the singer Claude Nougaro as pianist, arranger and co-composer. He was born Maurice Camille Gustave Vanderschueren on June 11, 1929, in Vitry-sur-Seine, the son of an accordionist. He trained in classical piano and found jazz on the radio.

He began working as a jazz pianist in 1950 at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris, where he took over the chair of the pianist Eddie Bernard. After military service he played with Roger Guérin and with the Belgian saxophonist Bobby Jaspar. In 1953 he was on a Django Reinhardt session issued by Blue Star as the single "Nuages", the first record he made, and the early 1950s also brought sessions with the tenor saxophonist Don Byas and, in 1954, with the American guitarist Jimmy Raney during Raney's stay in Paris. He worked in the ensembles of the guitarist Henri Crolla and the saxophonist and clarinetist André Ekyan, including a spell at Maxim's, and made his first records under his own name for the new Vega label. The Fresh Sound label's notes and a Jazz Journal review also place him with Clifford Brown in Paris in the early 1950s.

In 1955 and 1956 he toured Europe with Chet Baker. Trio sides he cut in Paris in those years, with the bassist Benoît Quersin and the drummer Jacques David, were reissued decades later on Fresh Sound. Stéphane Grappelli took him to Hamburg, where a Grappelli ensemble concert of May 17, 1957 was recorded by the broadcaster NDR. In 1957 he also met the singer Maria Vincent, whom he accompanied on about two years of travel in the Middle East. Back in Paris by the end of the decade, he played the Blue Note club in a trio with the bassist Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke, alternating nightly with a visiting American soloist. The live album Jazz at the Blue Note (Fontana, 1961) documents that trio, and his own Piano Rendez-Vous appeared on Fontana in 1960 and 1961. In 1962 he won the Prix Django Reinhardt of the Académie du Jazz.

His other long partnership began in the early 1960s, when he met Claude Nougaro. Vander became the singer's pianist, arranger and co-composer, and the two worked together for about forty years. Nougaro liked to tell audiences that his big band was Vander's ten fingers and nicknamed him "le coq"; the song "Le Coq et la Pendule" grew from a melody Vander first wrote for his wife and took its title from that nickname. Vander also wrote under the pseudonym Franck Dalone, a name that appears on his Nougaro compositions and on his 1976 album Chess. Studio and screen work ran alongside: he orchestrated Francis Lai's score for Un homme et une femme (1966), recorded the title tune with his own orchestra, played piano with Grappelli on the music for Les Valseuses (1974) and shared the soundtrack album of Calmos (1976) with Georges Delerue. He also played organ on Elek Bacsik's Guitar Conceptions (Fontana, 1963) and played on sessions for Pierre Gossez and Boulou Ferré.

From 1970 he recorded his own jazz projects again. The Pianos Puzzle series, recorded in June 1970 and issued by Saravah, was a set of piano LPs that gathered him with Georges Arvanitas, Michel Graillier and René Urtreger, and gave each of them a volume of his own; Vander's, Philly, was made with the bassist Luigi Trussardi, the drummer Charles Bellonzi and the drummer and vibraphonist Bernard Lubat. He recorded a trio LP with Trussardi and Philly Joe Jones at Studio Davout in Paris and appeared on Violin Summit (America, 1974) with Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty. His 1976 album Chess has him on piano, electric piano and organ, and Du Côté de chez swing (Night and Day, 1980) is a trio record with Trussardi and Bellonzi made in Paris in July 1980. In 1980 he joined Kenny Clarke, Marc Fosset, Patrice Caratini, Roger Guérin and Bob Garcia on Kenny "To Day", and in the late 1970s he played with Chet Baker again and with Johnny Griffin. The strings-and-horns album Effraction (Claap Première, 1983) shows him as composer and conductor, and in September 1984 he recorded a trio session with Michelot and Lubat for Owl, with sleeve notes by Nougaro.

His later records returned often to Nougaro's songs: Vander se joue Nougaro (Polygram Jazz, 1992) for solo piano, Nougaro sans paroles (2000) with Michelot and Lubat, and Ô Toulouse... Hommage à Claude (Futur Acoustic, 2004) with Eddy Louiss, Lubat and Trussardi, issued in 2004, the year the singer died. He also joined Biréli Lagrène for the Sinatra-songbook album Blue Eyes (Dreyfus Jazz, recorded in June 1997), and issued the solo piano album Récidive in 2002. After Nougaro's death he toured France with the tribute show Ils se la jouent Nougaro, with the pianist Charles Tois, the organist Laurent Vander and the bassist Eric Gade. He lived for many years in Pindray in the Vienne and passed away on February 16, 2017, at Montmorillon, at the age of 87. He was the adoptive father of the drummer Christian Vander, founder of the group Magma, and his son Laurent Vander is a jazz organist.

Vander was a bebop-rooted pianist with a clear, light touch and an easy sound. A Jazz Journal review of his trio recordings praises his polished technique, his warm and reflective swing and the way he stays close to the melody and avoids dense harmony; it sets him as less virtuosic than Martial Solal and less sensitive than René Urtreger, but a stylish player with a distinct integrity. AllMusic files him under bop and lists Bud Powell, Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli among his related artists, and his catalogue bears that out: standards and swing pieces such as "Tiger Rag" and "I'll Remember April" in the 1950s and 1960s, the blues-and-bop repertoire of the Blue Note trio, and later records that move easily between solo piano, electric piano and organ, string writing, and the chanson of Nougaro. Part of his career was spent in studios and in the pit for film and song, which accounts for the number of pop and chanson credits beside the jazz ones.