François Minaux is a French singer, songwriter, composer, flutist and thereminist. He is in the process
of developping an eclectic musical style that draws influences from experimental, free-improvisation, free-jazz,
electronic, avant-garde and contemporary-classical. Born and raised in Paris, France, François studied music
at the Paul Ducas Municipal Conservatory in Paris and pursued higher education in musical arts in the U.S.A.
Ongoing collaborations and experimentations with choreographers, painters, actors, composers, videographers,
writers, journalists, ethnomusicologists and audiences have led him to create multi-media performances
while a doctoral student in Austin, TX, U.S.A.
With the help of his colleagues, they worked together to create an universal artistic language that would allow all
artistic medium (dance, music, visual art, theater) to communicate with each other without the intervention
of a conductor. The main goal was to emancipate the artistic community from their leaders by decentralizing power,
redistributing it in a equal manner to all partcipants using a new universal system.
Inspired from anarchist theories and drawing from his experience as a kid educated in French public school,
he co-created "the Playground" with French contemporary dancer Sandie Donzica. In the "Playground" participants
would use and share together one common element to communicate their intentions: physical space. A set of rules based
on movement was established to allow communication in a space divided by different areas. No conductor or score
were used. Only free-improvisation technics and the individual intentions from each participants
organised by rules set in space were used to create a piece.
Early on, when he was finishing is conservatory studies in Paris, François was inspired by American acitivist
artists and their work. He though that the French art world was too heavily controled by academia and lack
the boldness and directness of their American contemporaries.
Strugling to find a path to deliver meaningful works to an engaged audience in the U.S.A., first to the contemporary-classical milieu
then in the underground scene, he shifts again and starts to focus on topic that directly affect his audience. After years of
maturation, François embarques to develop a performance practice specifically aimed to support an humanitarian cause based on
topics ranging from world news, socio-polical issues, human psychology and behavior mixed with personal autobiographical elements.
He started to believe that art was an universal language understood by all and a medium able to indiscriminately touch all humans,
animals and living things. Using art as a universal language to unite all cultures, he started to build a community of
participants gather around a same shared topic or problem.
For the last 7 years, he has researched on the U.S. Secret War in Laos and has gathered stories from people who
where involved in the crisis. He started adapting the stories to his music and performing them with Leaf Chimes and
Key Hole, both experimental-music bands making this, his first attempt to produce music based on real events subjects.
Realizing the growing motivation for real world events and sensing that he might have found a new motivation in producing
music on stage, he pushes this project further, and embarkes in a multi-disciplinary project that he created: The Laos Song Cycle.
Feeling a growing responsibility as a world citizen, and with the help of a group of participants and artists, he is organizing
the creation of The Laos Song Cycle by using the emotional and social aspects found in collaborative work and performance.
By rather centering his artistic production on a shared-topic than a piece of art, he hopes to raise awareness as well as help
the healing and reconciliation processed necessary to cope with such trauma as the one caused by the U.S. Secret War in Laos.
contact: francois"dot"minaux"at"gmail"dot"com
