Jacques Chanier, 57, noted pianist and ‘musical poet’ on Boston’s jazz scene

In a YouTube video of a Henry Cook Band performance at the 1998 Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival, Mr. Chanier takes a long intricate solo, the camera offering a visual counterpoint to the notes flying from his fingers.

“Jacques was a pretty mild-mannered, unpretentious guy, which made what happened when he sat down at the piano all the more amazing,’’ his friend Andy Zimmermann, a sculptor and guitarist, wrote in a tribute read at Mr. Chanier’s memorial service last Monday.

“Sometimes it was like a dam breaking, a powerful force being unleashed, filling the room with sound. Massive, complex music would come billowing out: deeply intelligent, complicated ideas, developing and changing at an astonishing speed, with gorgeous textures and touches.’’

After arriving in Boston from France 30 years ago, Mr. Chanier composed an eclectic existence as a performer, teacher, and student in Boston’s jazz scene as he played and recorded with ensembles, duos, and by himself.

He died at home in Lincoln on Oct. 18 of complications from CNS lymphoma, a rare brain cancer. Mr. Chanier was 57 and previously lived in Somerville.

“At first you might think, ‘My God, how can he move his fingers that fast?’ ’’ Zimmermann wrote. “But after a minute you would be thinking, ‘My God, how can he think that fast?’ Then you would stop thinking and just hang on and go along for the ride, and feel grateful that you were lucky enough to be alive and present in that room while it was happening.’’

Building off a foundation in classical training, followed by several years playing in pop-rock bands in France, Mr. Chanier emerged in his jazz years a pianist who could perform virtually any tune. For his own creations, though, he drew on what he called “emotional states.’’

“I will not use composition techniques just for the sake of using them,’’ he said in an undated interview with The Vermont Review (published online at vermontreview.tripod.com/Interviews/chanier.htm).

“I have to start with an idea that moves me and then I develop it with whatever compositional tool will best serve that idea.’’

“Jacques was an incredibly gifted musician,’’ said his friend David Eure, a jazz violinist in Natick who teaches at New England Conservatory, “but even more important, I thought he put so much of himself emotionally into his music, into each and every note. He was basically a musical poet.’’

Ruth Rothstein, Mr. Chanier’s wife, said he grew up in Paris, where his family recognized his musical talent and, despite being of modest means, sent him as a child to sight-singing lessons, then piano studies.

He announced plans at age 15 to become a professional musician, she said, but his father disagreed, the two fought, and Mr. Chanier ended up leaving home. He spent several years living on the streets, then played in popular music dance bands.

When Mr. Chanier’s father was dying, the two reconciled, and Mr. Chanier’s inheritance funded his first trip to the United States, to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston. Beginning in 1979, he spent four years studying jazz, classical composing, and arranging.

Returning to France, he met a student from the United States, and they married and moved back to Boston. The marriage ended in divorce and Mr. Chanier’s jazz studies began anew with Charlie Banacos, a renowned jazz educator on the North Shore.

To pay bills while studying and performing, Mr. Chanier took a series of low-paying jobs, including washing dishes, but being part of Boston’s jazz scene made it worthwhile.

“When I first arrived here, it was like a fairy tale,’’ he told The Vermont Review. “So much music, so good. So many places!’’

“Even after he completed his schooling, he practiced hours and hours every day,’’ his wife said. “He would learn classical pieces in 12 different keys and memorize them. He was driving a cab, he was doing all sorts of things just so he could do what he wanted to do.’’

Mr. Chanier met saxophonist Henry Cook at a jam session in Jamaica Plain and ended up playing and recording with Cook’s band and drummer Bobby Ward. Through this association, Mr. Chanier played on the band’s CD “Dimensional Odyssey,’’ which won a Boston Music Award in 1995 for best jazz album on an independent label.

By then, Mr. Chanier had picked up what would become another long-running gig: teaching students from ages 4 to 80 through the Longfellow Neighborhood Council and Community School in Cambridge for more than 16 years.

“He was a very, very good teacher,’’ said Penelope Kleespies, director of the school.

Along with teaching students the basics, she said, “he was very respectful of the music. You didn’t go on until you had something right. In the end, what he gave people was such a solid foundation.’’

Mr. Chanier released two CDs of his own compositions, “Kite Flight’’ in 1999 and “Quilt’’ in 2002, and taught private lessons, too.

Among his students in the 1990s was Rothstein. They became a couple about five years ago, after his second marriage ended.

After one date, she recalled, he said, “Let’s take good care of each other.’’

A few months later, in May 2005, he was diagnosed with cancer. They married in October 2006.

“To be loved by Jacques was a gift like no other,’’ she said at the memorial service. “Thirty years of it sure would’ve been nice, but five gave me enough for a million lifetimes.’’

The illness informed Mr. Chanier’s approach to music and performing.

He told the Boston Herald in 2007 that after treatments hobbled his memory, he ended up “relearning what I already knew, but in a different way.’’

That year, Mr. Chanier released “Access Renewed,’’ a double-CD set recorded live with trombonist Jeff Galindo.

“Now that I’ve gone through this, I feel that what’s important about jazz is to discover what you can do,’’ Mr. Chanier said of the tunes on the live CDs in the Herald interview. “I got to replay those songs with a new outlook, which is that the songs are only there to express myself.’’

In addition to his wife, Mr. Chanier leaves his mother, Pierrette of Paris; a brother, Jean-Pierre of Paris; and a sister, Annie Bégorre of Le Havre, France.

A service has been held.