Jeanne Loriod was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, regarded as the world's leading exponent of the ondes Martenot

Ondes Martenot

The ondes Martenot , also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin...

.

Born in Houilles

Houilles

Houilles is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located from the center of Paris.-Transport:...

, Yvelines

Yvelines

Yvelines is a French department in the region of Île-de-France.-History:Yvelines was created from the western part of the defunct department of Seine-et-Oise on 1 January 1968 in accordance with a law passed on 10 January 1964 and a décret d'application from 26 February 1965.It gained the...

, she was the younger sister of Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod was a French pianist, teacher, and composer, and the second wife of composer Olivier Messiaen. Her sister was the Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod.-Life:...

, the pianist and second wife of Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

. She performed all of Messiaen's works for ondes Martenot, most notably the Turangalîla-Symphonie

Turangalîla-Symphonie

The Turangalîla-Symphonie is a large-scale piece of orchestral music by Olivier Messiaen. It was written from 1946 to 1948, on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The premiere was given by that orchestra on December 2, 1949, conducted by Leonard Bernstein in Boston...

, which she recorded six times. The work was not written for her, however, but Ginette Martenot

Ginette Martenot

Ginette Martenot was a French pianist and expert and leading performer on the twentieth-century electronic instrument the ondes Martenot, which was invented by her brother Maurice. At the age of sixteen, she entered the Paris Conservatory, where she studied counterpoint and fugue with the composer...

, sister of the inventor Maurice

Maurice Martenot

Maurice Martenot was a French cellist, a radio telegrapher during the first World War, and an inventor.Born in Paris, he is best known for his invention of the ondes Martenot, an instrument he first realized in 1928 and spent decades improving. He unveiled a microtonal model in 1938...

.

Loriod's enormous repertoire included fourteen concertos, some three hundred works with concertante parts for ondes and another 250 chamber works. She also performed on numerous film soundtracks (including - perhaps most accessibly - the 1981 animated feature, Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal (film)

Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian fantasy-animated film directed by Gerald Potterton and produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the publisher of Heavy Metal magazine....

), and published a definitive work on the instrument, the three-volume treatise Technique de l’onde electronique type martenot (1987).

She suffered a stroke and drowned while swimming near Antibes on the French Riviera in August, 2001.