Emmanuel Bex (born June 8, 1959 in Caen) is a French jazz keyboardist.

Bex was born into a family of musicians. His father and grandfather were pianists, his mother a music theory teacher.

At the age of eight, he entered the Conservatoire de Caen (where his parents taught), from which he graduated with numerous prizes in different disciplines: 1st prize in piano, 1st prize in bassoon and 1st prize in chamber music.

A student at the Paris Conservatory, he studied musical composition from 1973 to 1976, and at the end of his studies won the 1st prize in specialized solfeggio, harmony and musical analysis. Back in Caen, he became passionate about jazz after hearing Relaxin' by Miles Davis and replaced pianist Bibi Louison in a local trio.

In 1977, while he was an accompanist at the Bordeaux Conservatory, he met Bernard Lubat, an unclassifiable multi-instrumentalist and agitator of ideas: "I owe a lot to Bernard Lubat... Two years of unlearning... and his sense of excess, from which I still have irreparable after-effects... creative. [citation needed]

In 1982, after hearing and meeting the organist Eddy Louiss, Emmanuel Bex bought his first Hammond B3 organ, which then became his main instrument.

He played with Ray Lema and bluesmen, before forming a duo with percussionist Xavier Jouvelet, who toured Europe for five years with the Ciné-Concert show Bex et Jouvelet contre King-Kong.

Emmanuel Bex received the Sacem Composition Prize in 1984 for Le Rayon Vert, a show that combines music, text and image around the work of Jules Verne. From 1986 to 1988, he played and recorded in a trio with violinist Jean-Luc Pino and drummer Yves Teslar, while also working as a piano teacher at the CIM, the famous Parisian jazz school. He recorded Triple idiome with his trio and collaborated with the Bande à Badault, an orchestra founded by pianist Denis Badault.

In the early 1990s, he performed on stage and recorded with Turk Mauro, Barney Wilen, and in a trio with Gérard Marais and Aldo Romano (the album Poisson nageur was released in 1992).

At that time, he created the Bex'tet, a quintet that revealed his talents as a leader and composer, with whom he recorded three albums: Enfance (1991, with Gilles Renne on guitar), Organique (1993) and Rouge et or (1995, which received a "Choc Jazzman de l'année" by Jazz Magazine). The English saxophonist Ronnie Scott met them at the Pan Jazz Festival in Trinidad and Tobago and invited them to his famous club in London. At the same time, the Jazz Academy awarded him the Django-Reinhardt Prize in 1995.

Recordings and international tours followed one another, in the company of Babik Reinhardt, Christian Escoudé, Gordon Beck, Claude Barthélemy, Marcel Azzola, Biréli Lagrène, André Ceccarelli, Sylvain Beuf, Michel Graillier, Aldo Romano, etc.

Emmanuel Bex choisit ensuite de marier les sonorités de l’orgue Hammond et du steeldrum avec la grande formation Steel Bex, qui regroupe un quintet de jazz et un steel band et dont l'album sort en 1997 à l'occasion du festival Jazz sous les pommiers de Coutances.

À la fin des années 1990, il réalise un album avec trois trios: avec Biréli Lagrène et André Ceccarelli, Claude Barthélemy et Stéphane Huchard, Philip Catherine et Aldo Romano. Le trio Bex-Catherine-Romano se produit ainsi durant plusieurs années à travers toute l’Europe.

La création du trio devenu mythique, B.F.G., avec Glenn Ferris au trombone et Simon Goubert à la batterie, publie un album très largement récompensé (notamment Grand prix de l’Académie Charles-Cros, « Choc Jazzman de l'année », Prix Boris Vian de l’Académie du jazz, Djangodor 2002 dans la catégorie Meilleure formation de l’année).

En 2004, Emmanuel Bex reçoit le Django d’Or du Musicien de l’année, et publie dans le même temps l’album Conversing with melody, initiant une série de concerts avec de nombreux invités tels que Steve Shehan, Aldo Romano, Michel Portal ou Didier Malherbe.

L’année 2006 est marquée par la publication d’OrganSong avec la diva brésilienne Mônica Passos, qui va donner lieu à de nombreux concerts à travers le monde, parfois en compagnie de l’organiste Rhoda Scott. L’année d’après, Emmanuel Bex compose Esperanto Cantabile, concerto pour orgue Hammond et orchestre symphonique. La création a lieu au Palais des Congrès du Mans pour l’Europajazz Festival dans le cadre d’une soirée qui lui est consacrée (pour laquelle il invite Rhoda Scott et Mônica Passos), suivie d’une représentation à la salle Gaveau à Paris puis au Zénith de Caen.

En 2009, l’organiste monte un nouveau trio avec le batteur Simon Goubert et le saxophoniste-clarinettiste Francesco Bearzatti, sous le nom d’Open Gate trio. Ce trio qui effectue de très nombreux concerts devient le socle de tous les futurs projets d’Emmanuel Bex.

En 2010, il participe à de nombreux projets avec André Minvielle, Stéphane Huchard, Géraldine Laurent ou OOlivier Ker Ourio.

Compositeur inspiré, il livre en 2011 Requiem en Couleurs, grande pièce pour trio de jazz et chœur avant de réaliser un de ses projets les plus ambitieux : Open Gate feat. Béla Bartók, album paru en octobre 2011 qui parvient à faire se rencontrer le trio Bex-Bearzatti-Goubert et l’Orchestre des Pays de Savoie sous la direction de Franck Tortiller autour d’un hommage à Béla Bartók. Le répertoire met en œuvre une création d’Emmanuel Bex en trois mouvements ainsi que les Mikrokosmos et Danses Roumaines du compositeur hongrois.

In 2012, Emmanuel Bex recorded an album dedicated to pianist Bill Evans, B2Bill, with Italian pianist Nico Morelli and American spoken worder Mike Ladd.

In 2013, the naïve label offered the band B.F.G. to record a new album, twelve years after their first opus Here & Now. The band released the album Now or Never[1].

In 2016, he composed a work in collaboration with the author and director David Lescot, La Chose Commune, whose main subject is the Paris Commune, with Élise Caron, Mike Ladd, Géraldine Laurent, Simon Goubert, David Lescot and himself. A record was recorded on the Triton label.

In 2019, he recorded with Philip Catherine and Aldo Romano, La belle vie, after fifteen years of concerts together. He wrote the arrangements for a jazz rock operetta, Azor, in which he played.

Emmanuel Bex and his wife Sophie created Saint-Denis Jazz in 2010[2], a project that brings together jazz programmes and activities every year, in the form of a jazz club, a large amateur orchestra (La Grande Soufflerie) and a choir (La belle Zoé), and for which Bex creates a new film every year, surrounded by professional musicians.