© Francois Beaurain
© Francois Beaurain

Léo Fabre-Cartier is a French musician. He studied the oud with Marc Loopuyt (France), Iyad Haimour (Syria) and Ahmed Chiki (Morocco). Holder of a DEM (Diploma of Musical Studies) in traditional oriental music, he also has a degree in musicology from the Lyon 2 University.

 

Living in Morocco since 2012, he participates in numerous projects ranging from the traditional music of the Orient (Majlis Trio) to encounters betweeen Ottoman and Baroque music (Les Turqueries), by way of contemporary dance (Nacera Belaza, Jitti Chompee), contemporary music (Vincent Trollet), slam poetry (Ami Karim) or even story-telling shows (Compagnie Les Chemins du Monde). 

© Nathalie Jamais
© Nathalie Jamais

Since 2016 he has specialised in Moroccan popular or “chaabi” music alongside the young loutar player and master of Amazigh songs of the Middle Atlas, Younes Baami, with whom he has founded the sextet Araw N Fazaz. He is also co-founder of ArbaA Experimental Chaâbi, a collaboration between the French jazz groove quartet ArbaA and Moroccan chaabi musicians, as well as OULED EL BLED, a songwriting project in Moroccan Arabic, inspired by the traditional music of the Cherifian Kingdom.

 

Léo Fabre-Cartier collaborated with artists of international stature such as Kiya Tabassian, Jean-Claude Drouot, Tamalyn Dalal and Megumi Matsubara and he performed in particular at Burapha's Music and Performing's Arts International Festival (Thailand - 2013), at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music (Morocco - 2014), at the Jazz à Vienne's festival (France - 2017), at ADEM (Switerland - 2021), at the Roskilde Festival (Denmark - 2022) and at the French Instituts (Algeria - 2022).