Joël Fonsegrive

Joël Fonsegrive grew up as a Swiss & French dual citizen near Basel (CH) listening to Earth, Wind & Fire, Serge Gainsbourg and Verdi. He took piano lessons as a child and discovered the electric bass at the age of 17. The love and passion for the instrument got him to dive deeper and deeper into live performed & recorded music. He has played concerts with various bands and projects all over the world, from Toronto to Budapest via New York, London, Paris, Berlin. He has been a permanent member of the Swiss Artpop-band "The bianca Story", with whom he wrote and recorded the album "Coming Home" in 2010 at Abbey Road Studios in London. After winning the „Basel Pop Award“ in 2010, the band was signed to Tim Renner's label MOTOR MUSIC in Berlin and reached the highest crowdfunding sum for music in Europe (€ 90,000) with the album "DIGGER" in 2013. This achievement in the music business of GSA was followed by various music theatre productions ("M & The Acid Monks" 2012 and "Gilgamesh Must Die!" 2014, both at Deutsche Oper Berlin (DE), "Peter Pan" 2015 at Konzerttheater Bern (CH), "Die Drei Räuber" 2017, "Herr der Diebe" 2018 and "Wiederauferstehung der Vögel" 2020 at Theater Basel (CH), "Hunderte Kinder in wildem Kampf" 2021 at Schauburg Munich (DE)). He took his degree as master of arts in music at the Zurich University of the Arts and completed both bachelor and master studies with honours. He works as a live & studio bass player, musical director, composer and producer. He is part of CLUB FÜR MELODIEN, a Switzerland based three-member artist collective that carries out music, theatre and film projects. He is also an instructor at the Zurich University of the Arts and teaches bass and piano when not being on the road. He lives in Berlin and Basel.