On May 30th Arts et Metiers alumni from Washington DC area, gathered in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for a community get-together hosted by Guy Schuch (Ch 168).
A big thanks to the host and the organizers Jean Pommier, AFAM CEO, and Vincent Schmitt who travelled from West Coast to join this gathering.
In addition to a warm and friendly Gadz reunion and watching the Arsenal-PSG match together in the afternoon, some of the participants enjoyed visiting the Battlefield of Fredericksburg and taking in the views from the Marye's Heights.
We look forward to welcoming more members of the Gadz community in Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland and beyond at future gatherings.
Jean Pommier, Nicolas Guibert, Jean-François Mangeot, Guy Schuch, Eric Thibau, Matthieu Gros and Vincent Schmitt
The Houston Gadz'Arts group has set a new record for the number of spring events organized this year!
On May 28, a group of alumni gathered at The Pit Room in Houston to enjoy drinks, BBQ, and great conversation. It was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect, catch up, and no doubt start discussing ideas for future events.
We wish the Houston group a fantastic summer and look forward to seeing what they organize next!
A special thank you to Mathilde Godard (Bo 203), Central group president, who recently took on the leadership of the group and organized this gathering. Your commitment helps keep our community active and connected!
On May 27th, AFAM organized an informational session for Parcours US, GTE, and TAMU students coming to the United States this September.
A big thank you to our regional representatives — Nicolas Horde, Mathilde Godard, Sacha Ghebali and Valentin Fehr — for taking the time to answer the students’ many questions and share their advice and experience.
More than 30 students joined the session and had the opportunity to learn more about AFAM and meet GadzArts from across the US community.
We are looking forward to meeting all of you again in a more informal setting, especially during our next GadzMeet event taking place in San Francisco this September!
Nicolas and Valentin during the session with students
AFAM: Hello Laurent and thank you very much for agreeing to answer our questions. It is a very unusual interview because your professional career is very unusual. Engineer by education (Ai 197), you decided to go into an artistic career. You are a composer, arranger and performer across jazz, theater and film. How come?
Laurent:To be completely honest, studying at Arts et Métiers was not exactly the result of a deep personal vocation. Ever since I was a teenager, I had been drawn to film and music. In high school, I spent a lot of my spare time making short films and filming sketches with friends, while music occupied an equally important place in my life.
At the same time, I grew up in a family environment where scientific studies were seen as the most serious and respectable path. My father, shaped by his own experience, strongly believed that a top engineering degree was the safest and most meaningful route. Since I was reasonably good at mathematics and physics, I followed that path, while fully aware that I would probably never become an engineer—at least not in the traditional sense.
So in many ways, I approached engineering school as a parallel track. I worked toward the degree seriously, but I also spent a great deal of time preparing for what I imagined would come after: borrowing film books and lecture notes from friends studying in film school, reaching out to film professionals, watching movies obsessively, and steering internships toward more creative environments: television, recording studios, anything connected to storytelling or music.
After graduation, I took some time to reflect on how I could realistically build a life around those interests. And that eventually led me back to school to study film scoring, and later to Los Angeles. From there, things unfolded gradually: composing for films and video games, reconnecting with acting and performance, and little by little finding a path that felt more aligned with who I had always imagined myself to be. And I’m still working on it!
AFAM: Your list of projects is impressive. Please tell us more about some of the projects you enjoyed the most.
Laurent:Working on Resident Evil 6, for instance, was particularly memorable. It gave me the opportunity to travel to Japan and Australia and to record with a hundred-piece orchestra. Because Resident Evil is such a major franchise, the level of pressure and expectations was quite intimidating, but also incredibly formative. Seeing how a large company like Capcom manages a project of that scale taught me a great deal about collaboration, deadlines and responsibility. I also enjoyed contributing to the music teams of large Hollywood films. What fascinated me there was observing the intersection between creativity and structure: highly imaginative people working under enormous logistical and commercial constraints, all trying to move in (sort of) the same direction. There is something almost engineering-like in how many moving parts have to align. That said, what excites me the most has always been the more human and immediate side of storytelling—being on stage or on set. Over the past several years, I have focused much more on singing and acting, and that shift has changed my life in ways I did not fully anticipate. Both disciplines have pushed me toward greater vulnerability and presence, which, in turn, has had an impact far beyond work.
A good example of that evolution is my new album,Anyone Can Whistle: A Sondheim Journey, which is probably the project I have enjoyed the most to date. It is a self-produced album in which I reinterpret eleven songs by Stephen Sondheim through a jazz lens. The album brought together around sixty musicians, including some remarkable artists—a few internationally renowned, others friends and collaborators I have met along the way. What made the experience especially meaningful was that it allowed me to bring together several worlds that have long mattered to me: jazz, theatre, storytelling, and personal expression.
AFAM: Can you share some insight into your future projects?
Laurent: So a few years ago, a French friend of mine—a comedian and fellow creative trying to navigate life in Los Angeles—and I started a small production company to develop film projects together. Like many people in the industry, we have watched filmmaking change dramatically in recent years, and we thought: rather than waiting indefinitely for permission, why not try to create the kinds of stories we ourselves would want to make and act in? That has become one of my main long-term focuses: developing films that feel personal and meaningful, while also creating opportunities for ourselves and our collaborators. At the same time, I still compose occasionally, although more selectively than before. Earlier in my career, I said yes to so many things simply to gain experience or make a living—or just because I thought I was supposed to. With time, I have become more intentional about choosing projects that genuinely resonate with me. Life feels too short not to. Beyond specific projects, I think there is also a broader ongoing goal: continuing to improve—as a singer, as a musician, as a performer, as a filmmaker, and hopefully as a person. Artistic work has a way of constantly reminding you that there is still more to learn, which can be humbling but also exciting!
AFAM: you have been living in Los Angeles for more than 20 years. Please tell us a bit more about your life outside of work. What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
Laurent:I have actually lived in Los Angeles for a little less than twenty years, to be precise! It took me some time to truly appreciate living here. Like many people drawn to Tinseltown, I was fascinated by it as a teenager because of films, television, and music. In my imagination, Los Angeles represented the Hollywood dream. The reality, of course, is more complicated: the traffic is legendary, to put it politely; the city is sprawling and can sometimes feel isolating; and building meaningful relationships takes time.
But over the years, I have grown genuinely attached to it. Los Angeles attracts people who come from elsewhere to reinvent themselves, and there is something inspiring about that mix of ambition, creativity, resilience and total insanity. The cultural offering is extraordinary, although obviously more spread out than in Manhattan, Paris, or London.
Outside of work, I still spend a great deal of time watching films and television, partly out of enjoyment and partly out of professional curiosity, and going to performances never really feels separate from life.
Most importantly, I am married and have two children, so spending time with them is what brings me the most joy. Between family life, creative projects, my tendency to spread myself way too thin, and the unpredictability of artistic work, I would not say there is an enormous amount of “free time,” but I feel fortunate that much of what I enjoy and what I do professionally tends to overlap.
AFAM:How being an engineer and a gadz’arts helped ( if it somehow did) you in your artistic career?
Laurent:That is probably the most difficult question, because the honest answer is: not in an obvious or direct way. I already knew while I was at Arts et Métiers that I would probably pursue something entirely different. I always felt somewhat out of place there, not because there was anything wrong with the school or the people there, but because my interests and temperament were elsewhere. I was deeply drawn to film, music and storytelling, and I instinctively felt closer to people in artistic environments than engineering ones. In that sense, I don’t think I ever truly found my “tribe” until much later, in music and theatre. For a long time, I honestly felt those years had taken me away from the path I wanted to pursue. But with some distance, I can also recognize that a few things stayed with me. One is a certain technical ease and curiosity. Working in film and music today often means navigating software, recording technology, computers, hardware, editing systems, virtual instruments, and increasingly complex technical ecosystems. I am generally quite comfortable learning those tools, troubleshooting problems, and understanding how things function behind the scenes, and there’s no doubt my scientific background helped with that. More broadly, I think it also gave me a certain stubbornness. Spending years pursuing a path while privately knowing you may ultimately choose another one forces you to think carefully about what matters to you. In my case, it made me all the more determined, once I finally had the freedom, to pursue the creative life seriously. So I wouldn’t say engineering shaped my artistic career directly—but perhaps it helped me understand more clearly where I did and did not belong, if that makes sense.
Arts et Métiers joined forces with fellow Grandes Écoles networks — ESCP, CentraleSupélec, HEC, and ESSEC — to celebrate the French alumni community in Houston!
More than 100 alumni attended this special May gathering, including 15 Gadz’Arts. The evening was organized by TFAN (Texas French Alumni Network) and graciously hosted at the Résidence du Consul Général de France, in the presence of the Consul General, Frank Marchetti.
A wonderful opportunity to strengthen connections across the French alumni community in Texas and foster new friendships and professional ties.
AFAM would especially like to thank Patrice Brossard (Bo 195) for organizing this memorable event and bringing together alumni from across the region.
at the event ( pictures: courtesy of Patrice Brossard)
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