Fabrice Denys, dit Fantazio

Fabrice Denys, aka Fantazio
Period: 2015-2016
Profession: Composer Fabrice Denys, aka Fantazio, was born in 1972. At the age of 15, he inherited a double bass and gradually began to tame it. He then began playing in the streets in solo performances. He then spent a year in Beijing and Berlin, where he continued to work on improvisation and remained until 1999. Preoccupied by the breakdown of rhythms, situations and angles of attack, he has collaborated with numerous musicians in concert halls and theaters alike. In this way, he has developed “accidental” performances in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, always accompanied by his double bass and his voice, which he “twists” in the various languages he now masters: Italian, Spanish, Chinese, English and French. His shows become situations where music, theatrical and poetic performance mingle, each time digging a little deeper into the links between intimate and social troubles. Fantazio’s project at Villa Médicis will bring together scattered elements of Western popular and scholarly culture. The result will be a sound piece, in French and Italian, shaped according to the diastole-systole movement. It will be a work of writing and rewriting, drawing on a wide range of elements: material gathered from his own experience, writings, music, texts, interviews, speeches, lectures, soliloquies, improvisations in situ and recordings, including echoes-sounds captured in the Villa Medici, in Rome and in other Italian cities. From this “material”, he will develop in-depth research into the back-and-forth between intimate and collective troubles.