Colette Maze's delicate fingers leap back and forth on the black-and-white keys of her piano, her body lightly swaying to the melody of Claude Debussy's famed Clair de Lune floating through her Paris living room.

On the 14th floor of an apartment building near the Eiffel Tower, 106-year-old Maze looks to the clouds for inspiration, saying music is more important for her than any type of food.

French cultural venues have now been closed since months due to the COVID-19 pandemic but that didn't deter Maze, born in 1914, from recording her sixth album, due to be released in April.

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"I'd ask you, why do you drink a cafe au lait in the morning or why do you have steak from time to time?" she wonders. 

"And even steak doesn't matter to me, but that's not the case with music. You understand? That's my food, my food for the spirit and for the heart."

Maze, who has been playing the piano since the age of four, was raised in a middle class family, her father managing a fertilizer plant while her strict mother stayed at home.

Homeschooled by her parents for several years, Maze was accepted at Paris's Normal School of Music when her family moved to the French capital. There, she learnt routines based on yoga and finger gymnastics, which she credits for her still-agile fingers.

She then became a supporting piano player at several music schools in the city, a profession she sustained for most of her adult life.

Maze started recording albums in 1998, with a first release in 2001. After her 2020 album with works of French composers Erik Satie and Debussy, she's preparing a three-disc album of Debussy compositions.

Her son Fabrice Maze, who sees his mother as an "inspiration for others," says Debussy symbolises her work the most.

"Her good mood, her joy, her love of life brings people a smile in worrying times like the one that we're now living through," he says.

His mother, who says her inspiration first came from a "lack of tenderness" within her childhood home, says that when they day comes that she can't play any more, she would need to continue to feed her imagination.

"But I need something touchable. You need to taste candy, and my fingers need to feel the keys," she says.

Video editor: Riaz Jugon