Why Patterns?

At the end of 2017, Morgane Carnet (saxophone), Luca Ventimiglia (prepared vibraphone), Jean-Brice Godet (clarinet) and Alexandre du Closel (prepared piano) met at the latter’s initiative in a café in Ménilmontant to improvise together, inspired by American repetitive music. FANTôME was born. As their meetings progressed, the project became clear: to play repetitive music in the footsteps of Terry Riley and Steve Reich, adding sounds, timbres and forms derived from improvised music and free jazz. The loops, shifts and repetition-variations combine with work on sound and a certain expressivity. The music becomes matter in perpetual motion. The few beginnings of dialogue are soon swallowed up by the whole, because in this group no one voice prevails over the others, and on the contrary, all are intimately interdependent. As creators of a vibratory and sensitive experience, the musicians are conductors of a flow that comes from elsewhere and goes beyond them.

Winner of Jazz Migration in 2021, FANTôME became Why Patterns? in 2022 following the departure of Jean Brice Godet. He was permanently replaced by saxophonist Théo Nguyen duc Long.