Piers Faccini | |
|---|---|
 Piers Faccini performing in 2006. | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 28 April 1970 (age 52–53) |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genres | World music, Folk music |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter |
| Years active | 1996–present |
| Labels | Beating Drum, Bleu Electric, Everloving Records, Tôt ou tard, Six Degrees Records |
Piers Damian G. Faccini (born 1970) is an English singer, painter and songwriter.
Piers Faccini was born in London, England to an Italian father and an English mother. His family moved to France when he was five years old. [1] His brother is the writer Ben Faccini.
Faccini first appeared on the music scene in London in 1997, co-founding Charley Marlowe with performance poet Francesca Beard, percussionist Frank Byng and guitarist Luc Suarez; the band split in 2001 when Faccini decided to pursue a solo career. His first solo album Leave no Trace was released in 2004 by French Independent label Label Bleu. [2] His second album was released by Los Angeles label Everloving Records in 2006; Tearing Sky was produced by JP Plunier, and featured Ben Harper, who Faccini would tour with between 2006 and 2008. [3] His third album released by the French independent record label Tot ou Tard in 2009 was co-produced by Faccini and Renaud Letang. His fourth album, My Wilderness, was released in late 2011 on Six Degrees Records in USA and Tot ou Tard in Europe. His fifth album, Between Dogs and Wolves (2013) and sixth album, I Dreamed an Island (2016) were released on his own label Beating Drum. [4]
Faccini has collaborated over the years with many musicians and singers including Rokia Traore, Busi Mhlongo, Ben Harper, Ballake Sissoko, Vincent Segal, Camille, Francesca Beard, Patrick Watson, Dawn Landes and Ibrahim Maalouf amongst others. [5] In March 2011, Faccini contributed to the Patagonia Music Collective, contributing to the UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation. [6]
Faccini has also produced several albums for other artists, most notably Ela by Brazilian cellist and singer Dom La Nena, [7] Northern Folk by Jenny Lysander [8] and Terre de Mon Poeme by Yelli Yelli. [9] Faccini is also a poet and children's author, publishing his first book of poetry No One's Here in 2016 and a children's book/cd La Plus Belle des Berceuses which he also illustrated in 2017, published by the French publisher, Actes Sud. [10]
In 2009, his album, Two Grains Of Sand, was nominated for the French independent music award, Le Prix Constantin [11] and voted album of the year by the listeners of French national radio, France Inter. His album with the cellist Vincent Segal Songs of Time Lost was in NPR's top ten world music albums of 2014 [12] and in Songlines top 10 albums of 2014 [13] as well as in their Greatest World Music Albums of the last five years.[ citation needed ]
His seventh studio album Shapes Of The Fall was released 2 April 2021. [14] The 13 tracks were co-produced by Piers Faccini and Fred Soulard. [15]
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BEL Heat [17] | FRA [18] | ||
| This Could Be You (with Charley Marlowe) | 2000 | — | — |
| Leave No Trace | 2004 | — | — |
| The Streets of London EP | 2005 | — | — |
| Tearing Sky | 2006 | — | 86 |
| Two Grains of Sand | 2009 | — | 82 |
| My Wilderness | 2011 | 1 | 47 |
| Between Dogs and Wolves | 2013 | — | 112 |
| Songs of Time Lost | 2014 | — | 126 |
| Desert Songs EP (with Dawn Landes) | 2016 | — | — |
| I Dreamed an Island | — | 129 | |
| Shapes Of The Fall | 2021 | — | — |
Benjamin Charles Harper is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Harper plays an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae, and rock music and is known for his guitar-playing skills, vocals, live performances, and activism. He has released twelve studio albums, mostly through Virgin Records, and has toured internationally.
Gabriele Susanne Kerner, better known by her stage name Nena, is a German singer who rose to international fame in 1983 as the lead vocalist of the band Nena with the Neue Deutsche Welle song "99 Luftballons". In that same year, the band re-recorded this song in English as "99 Red Balloons". Nena's re-recording of some of the band's old hit songs as a solo artist, produced by the co-composer of most of them, her former Nena band colleague and keyboard player Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, rekindled her solo career in 2002. Combined with the success of the Nena band years, she has sold over 25 million records, making her the most successful German pop singer in chart history.
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