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One day in the east of France about 18 years ago, a 14-year-old boy sat down at a piano in his music class and played Kiss’ I Was Made for Loving You. His classmates loved it, and word of his talents got around the school. Much to his disgust, the boy’s gym teacher started calling him Richard Clayderman.

Now in his early 30s, Maxence Cyrin still speaks bitterly of the gym teacher, still hates sport, and is still defying the conventions of a concert pianist. Two years after that school rock performance, he discovered punk and turned his back on formal training. The conservatory was too old, too dusty. There wasn’t enough room for individuality. “I didn’t like so much piano lessons,” he says in his thick French accent, “because I wanted the piano to be my own thing.”

After a musical journey that has led him through punk, new wave, techno, Burt Bacharach, Elvis, the Beach Boys, and back to classical and opera, he now finds himself signed to Laurent Garnier’s F Communications dance label and adapting music from electro artists such as Aphex Twin, Felix da Housecat, Depeche Mode, Moby, and Massive Attack for the piano.

He plays with knee-knocking, hands-above-the-head, key-pounding energy and laces his repertoire with quips. And you don’t need to be a techno-head to dig it. “People who know the songs try to recognise it, and most like the way I play,” says Cyrin. “But people who don’t know the music like it, because for them it’s no different if I make my own composition covers. They hear it like they hear classical music.”

That’s a compliment to both Chopin and Richard D James.

Hamish McKenzie

See: www.myspace.com/maxencecyrin

Maxence Cyrin plays  Sheung Wan Civic Centre Friday 9 at 8pm.