News - France: Frédéric Botton and Raymond Lefèvre pass away | Eurovision Song Contest News - 2009 Moscow, Russia 

Two personalities, whose names are closely connected with Eurovision in the French-speaking circle, died on Friday 27th June. Frédéric Botton and Raymond Lefèvre passed away at the age of 71 and 78 respectively.

Frédéric Botton is known as the composer and lyricist of the 1972 French entry "Comé-comédie", by Betty Mars (who died in 1989). Mr Botton worked with many artists but also as composer of score music for films. He was 71 years old. 

As for Raymond Lefèvre (78 years old), he conducted the Eurovision orchestra 5 times : from 1960 to 1963 for Monaco and in 1970 behind David Alexandre Winter for Luxembourg. Mr Lefèvre began his career as pianist in the orchestras of Franck Pourcel (another conductor on many times in the Eurovision history) and Paul Mauriat. The three musicians had their own band from the late 50's and til the early 80's and all published LP's with instrumental versions of big hits of the moment, which include a lot of entries from Eurovision, with a special touch.Raymond Lefevre conducted the orchestra for many live TV shows in the 60's and the 70's. He also composed for a large number of French movies, including most of Louis de Funès' comedies.