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.