Yvette Horner

Yvette Horner (née Hornère; 22 September 1922 – 11 June 2018) was a French accordionist, pianist and composer known for performing with the Tour de France during the 1950s and 1960s. During her 70-year long career, she gave more than two thousand concerts and released around 150 records, selling a total of 30 million copies. Horner won the Coupe mondiale de l'accordéon in 1948, and the Grand Prix du Disque in 1950 for Le Jardin secret d'Yvette Horner, a recital of classical works performed on piano and accordion.

Yvette Hornère (who later adopted the surname Horner, at her mother's suggestion), spent a few years of her childhood in Rabastens-de-Bigorre, where her father, Louis Hornère, was a property developer. She was an only child. Her mother encouraged her to play music, and her teacher, Marguerite Lacoste, taught her her first notes on the piano. She studied music at the conservatory of Tarbes, then at the conservatory of Toulouse where, at the age of 11, she obtained a first prize in piano.

Her mother convinced her to abandon her instrument for the chromatic accordion, explaining to her that there were no female accordionists, and that she would then be able to sustain herself. Throughout her life, Yvette Horner remained nostalgic for her first instrument, with which she her prize-winning recital of classical works Le Jardin secret d'Yvette Horner, and performed many times as a pianist on TV shows.

However, she made her débuts at the "Théâtre Impérial" in Tarbes (later renamed "Théâtre des Nouveautés"), which belonged to her paternal grandmother. She played in Pyrenean casinos before moving to Paris, where she was a student of Robert Bréard. In 1938, Yvette Horner participated, with Freddy Balta and André Lips, in the first accordion world championships organized in Paris, at the Moulin de la Galette, by the Confédération internationale des accordéonistes.

She finished second after Freddy Balta. She gave her first concert in 1947 in Paris and, in 1948, she was the first woman to win the Coupe mondiale de l'accordéon. She was awarded the Grand Prix International d'Accordion de Paris in 1953. In 1950, she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque de l'académie Charles-Cros for her album Le Jardin secret d'Yvette Horner, a recital of classical works performed on piano and accordion.

In 1952, the Calor company, sponsor of the Tour de France, offered her the opportunity to join the race, launching her career. She played on a podium at the finish of each stage. Wearing a sombrero and perched on the roof of a Citroën Traction Avant in the Suze brand colours, she repeated this in the following years, accompanying the Tour de France a total of eleven times, from 1952 to 1963.

She was also the queen of the Six Days of Paris in 1954. In the 1980s, she died her hair from brown to red and started wearing more extravagant stage outfits (such as the famous "Eiffel Tower Dress") created by fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who made her one of his muses. In 1987, she became the godmother of the Doudeville Accordion Club, the Cany-Accordeon-Club, directed by its founder, Annie Lacour, who worked at the Schola Cantorum de Paris for five years.

... Source: Article "Yvette Horner" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.