Renaud Garcia-Fons

Renaud Garcia-Fons in the Sculpture Park Wuppertal (2009)

Renaud Garcia-Fons (born December 24, 1962 near Paris , France ) is a French musician. He is considered to be one of the most virtuoso contrabassists of the present in the stylistic environment of world music and jazz .

Life

Garcia-Fons, whose father Pierre Garcia-Fons from Catalonia was a well-known painter, received his first piano and guitar lessons at the age of five. At the age of 16 he studied double bass at the Paris Conservatory . With his teacher François Rabbath he continued his education on his instrument and got to know Arabic music, which had a lasting impact on his further musical path. Rabbath opened his horizons to Mediterranean forms of music and taught him the basics of his bowing technique. García-Fons played early on with well-known jazz drummers such as Kenny Clarke or Sam Woodyard . At the age of twenty-one he won a number of music competitions and was then appointed professor of double bass by the French minister of culture.

Garcia-Fons began his career in Paris with Roger Guérin . He also played in classical orchestras. He was a member of the Orchester de Contrabasses, which consisted only of double basses. In 1990 and 1991 Claude Barthélemy brought him to the Orchester National de Jazz as bassist .

In addition to his own trio, which consisted of the flamenco guitarist Antonio Ruiz and the percussionist Pascal Rollando, Garcia-Fons worked with a wide variety of formations and musicians such as Rabih Abou-Khalil , Michel Godard , Michael Riessler , Kudsi Ergüner , Dhafer Youssef , Gerardo Núñez , Nguyên Lê , Pedro Soler and Cheb Mami .

In 2004 he presented world chamber music at the Scène Nationale de Sceaux with a composition for double bass, string quartet and for bansuri , a bamboo flute used in North Indian music, and for riq , an Arabic frame drum. In 2008 he played with various line-ups at the Montreal Jazz Festival. For his album La linea del sur and as bassist of the year , he received the Echo Music Prize of the German Phono Academy in 2010 . He composed film music and wrote ballet music for Carmen . In 2017 the music for the film Once upon a time in Germany followed . In the same year he won the BMW Welt Jazz Award competition with his program Revoir Paris , which he presented in his new trio with David Ventucci (accordion) and Stephan Caracci (vibraphone, percussion).

music

Renaud Garcia-Fons prefers to play a five-string double bass, which allows him unusual technical and tonal effects, especially in the highest registers of the instrument. In combination with his sophisticated plucking and bowing technique, he achieved an unparalleled virtuosity. He does not limit himself to the traditional repertoire of the most sophisticated playing techniques - double and triple fingerings, glissandi, natural and artificial flageolets - but also uses his instrument percussively (with his hands as if striking a bow). At solo concerts, he likes to work with loops to create polyphony or to be able to enter into a musical dialogue with himself. His role models include not only classical bassists like his teacher Rabath or jazz bassists like Scott LaFaro , but also guitarists like the Spaniard Paco de Lucía and sarangi players like the Indian Ram Narayan . Flamenco influences as well as those from the Orient and the Mediterranean can be found in his music .

He himself characterizes his playing as follows: “The double bass lies somewhere between the lute / guitar and the viola da gamba , and the sound of the bowed bow even shows similarities to the Indian string instrument sarangi. I've studied all kinds of music, ... classical , jazz, oriental music . That made me move on very different terrain today, even if there is continuous development. What particularly characterizes my playing on the double bass is that I often use the bow . It has always fascinated me to make the bass sing. "How well he can make his instrument" sing "was confirmed by critics:" Despite the rapid development that the double bass used as a soloist has taken in modern jazz, the question of a bowing technique that is adequate for jazz-appropriate phrasing has remained largely unanswered. But the contribution of Renaud Garcia-Fons on the five-string surpasses everything that previously seemed possible in jazz con arco on the double bass. "