Faton

Faton was the band created in 1993 by Francois ‘Faton' Cahen. This was the first band led by Cahen in which he would solely assume the whole responsibility of music and the musical direction. The first line-up comprised Cahen himself on piano, Patrick Tillman (violin), Claire Gillet (contrabass), Charly Doll (drums) and Philippe Makaïa (percussions). The same year, François Cahen was also invited to reform Zao (3), and Patrick Tillman, was a natural inclusion in this band too. But this reformation of Zao was only meant as a temporary studio project and Cahen’s priority was for his band Faton. After several concerts and rehearsals, they released a 4-track CD in 1997. In 1999 the band toured heavily in France with a restructured line-up : Claire Gillet, Patrick Tillman and Philippe Makaïa left, replaced respectively by Thierry Colson, Nicolas Krassik and Olivier Bonny. Their first full length album was released in 2000 and another tour planned this year. For this tour, François Cahen decided to hire new musicians (only Charly Doll remained) as he was unsatisfied with the previous members of the band : “they were ‘jazzmen’, and they fell in the jazz cliché of showing how good they could play, it wasn’t me nor my music anymore”. The new line-up lasted until 2002 and recorded one live album. In 2003, François Cahen reunited with Yochk’o Seffer in Ethnic Trio and together they accepted an offer from Hiroshi Masuda (Poseidon Productions) to reactivate Zao again for a tour in Japan. That was the start of several new collaborations between the old friends, and the definitive end of Faton.