Béatrice Bonifassi
Encyclopedia
Béatrice "Betty" Bonifassi (born c. 1971) is a French-born
vocalist based out of Montreal
, Quebec, Canada. She has a deep, contralto
singing voice, sometimes referred to as "masculine", which has been compared to that of Shirley Bassey
. Bonifassi has performed music of many styles in both English and French—from jazz
, to traditional music
, to blues
, to electronica
. In 2003 she gained international exposure when she provided the singing voices for the title characters of the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville
. She has collaborated with composer and saxophonist, François D'Amours and has performed and toured with musician Maxime Morin (also known as DJ Champion). Bonifassi appeared as a guest vocalist on Deweare
's album High Class Trauma (2006), and she is currently one half of the electronic music
duo Beast.
n mother and a father of Niçois-Italian
descent. Raised in a bilingual household, and having studied foreign languages at University, she became interested in other cultures and their traditional music. She has been singing and writing music for two decades.
In 1997, Bonifassi met her now ex-husband, Québécois
composer Benoît Charest
, while singing Jimi Hendrix
covers
at a Montreal jazz club. Later that year she moved from France to Montreal to join Charest, and has lived in the Canadian city ever since.
", from the 2003 animated film, Les Triplettes de Belleville
and he also performed this song live with Bonifassi and Charest at the 76th Academy Awards
ceremony—Morin played percussion on a bicycle during the performance.
In 2004 Bonifassi collaborated with Morin once again (performing as "DJ Champion") on his 2004 debut album, Chill'em All
. The album included the hit single "No Heaven" which is a soulful and bluesy song set against heavy dance beats and noisy guitar riffs. Inspired by Negro Songs of Protest, Bonifassi sings a plaintive tune reminiscent of the work songs sung by the chain-gangs of the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
"I heard Betty singing those blues songs, and she was the girl for that job," said Morin.
With the success of Chill'em All, Bonifassi toured for over two years with "Champion & His G-Strings". In 2008 the pair recorded a version of 1957 Screamin' Jay Hawkins
hit "I Put a Spell on You
" to be used as the theme song of the Québécois film Truffe.
ceremony.
Bonifassi stated in a 2004 interview that the experience of performing at the Oscars was "magnifique!"
"It was a magic moment that I shared with my husband; I thought it was brilliant!"
Her work on the Oscar-nominated film "opened doors" for her. After the buzz following her Oscars performance, she got many offers from large record companies in North America and abroad, to record jingles and an album in the same Django
/chanson réaliste
style; Bonifassi turned down the offers for fear of being pigeonholed, but has stated that she does not discount recording in this style in the future.
, Jean-Philippe Goncalves
, to form the band Beast. The band released their first album in Nov 2008.
Beast's sound has been compared with trip-hop, only with a bit more aggression. Bonifassi's vocal stylings also lean more towards rap
and spoken-word. Bonifassi is the main songwriter and the music is composed and produced by Goncalves. Canadian singer-songwriter Simon Wilcox
also assisted Bonifassi (whose native tongue is French) with Beast's lyrics, which are all performed in English.
"Simon really understood my dark side and the sadness of the moment," says Bonifassi. "I really wanted to sing something lyrically rich and powerful."
Goncalves has also stated that the name Beast suits their project very well: "Betty is a real beast," he jokes, "a ."
Beast's debut album was made available on iTunes
as of Nov 4, 2008; its official commercial release was Nov 18, 2008.
At the end of 2010 Bonifassi and Goncalves announced that they would be taking an indefinite break from the Beast project. Although when asked in a June 2011 interview for Voir
whether her break from Beast was a final one Bonifassi replied: "Disons que le retour de Beast n’est pas dans mes plans actuels" ("Let's say the return of Beast is not my current plans.")
Goncalves stated in an interview that the split was not due to any sort of quarrel between himself and Bonifassi. Citing lagging album sales, frustration with the record industry, the tiresome effects of touring, and familial commitments (Bonifassi's son was 9 years old at the time of the split), the band-mates said they would be working separately on their own local projects.
After Bonifassi and Goncalves announced that they would be taking an indefinite hiatus from the Beast project in late 2010, Bonifassi began to focus on solo projects including a performance at the Festival Montréal en lumière on Feb 24, 2011—making it her first solo performance since her break with Beast. Her performance included renditions of of songs by Édith Piaf
and Berthe Sylva, as well as a song by the Franco-Monégasque composer Léo Ferré
.
Bonifassi is slated to perform at the 2011 FrancoFolies festival
festival held in Montreal, first as part of a performance dedicated to Serge Gainsbourg on Jun 15, then in her own solo performances on the 17th and 18th. She also held two performances at the 2011 Les FrancoFolies de Montréal
music festival on June 17th and 18th.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
vocalist based out of Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec, Canada. She has a deep, contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
singing voice, sometimes referred to as "masculine", which has been compared to that of Shirley Bassey
Shirley Bassey
Dame Shirley Bassey, DBE , is a Welsh singer. She found fame in the late 1950s and was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century"...
. Bonifassi has performed music of many styles in both English and French—from jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, to traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
, to blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, to electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
. In 2003 she gained international exposure when she provided the singing voices for the title characters of the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville
Les Triplettes de Belleville
The Triplets of Belleville is a 2003 animated comedy film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet. It was released as Belleville Rendez-vous in the United Kingdom...
. She has collaborated with composer and saxophonist, François D'Amours and has performed and toured with musician Maxime Morin (also known as DJ Champion). Bonifassi appeared as a guest vocalist on Deweare
Deweare
Franck Deweare , also known by his stage name Deweare, and previously as Franck Marx, is a musician native to Verdun, France, who has been based out of Montreal, Quebec since 2004...
's album High Class Trauma (2006), and she is currently one half of the electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
duo Beast.
Personal life
Bonifassi was born in Nice, France to a YugoslaviaYugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
n mother and a father of Niçois-Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
descent. Raised in a bilingual household, and having studied foreign languages at University, she became interested in other cultures and their traditional music. She has been singing and writing music for two decades.
In 1997, Bonifassi met her now ex-husband, Québécois
French-speaking Quebecer
French-speaking Quebecers are francophone residents of the Canadian province of Quebec....
composer Benoît Charest
Benoît Charest
Benoît Charest is a Canadian guitarist and film score composer from Quebec. He is best known for the soundtrack of the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville , for which he won a César Award for Best Music Written for a Film as well as a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Music...
, while singing Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
covers
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
at a Montreal jazz club. Later that year she moved from France to Montreal to join Charest, and has lived in the Canadian city ever since.
Work with DJ Champion
In the late 1990s, Benoît Charest and Montreal DJ and musician Maxime Morin became co-owners of Ben & Max Studios – a company specializing in jingles and soundtracks. In 2001 Morin sold his share in the company back to Charest in order to continue his own musical career under the pseudonym DJ Champion, however he remained in contact with Bonifassi and Charest: Morin performed bass and percussion on the song "Belleville Rendez-vousBelleville Rendez-vous
"Belleville Rendez-vous" is a song from the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville , with music by Benoît Charest and lyrics by Sylvain Chomet. The song was performed "in character" in the film by Béatrice Bonifassi. The soundtrack album includes two versions of the song, one in French and...
", from the 2003 animated film, Les Triplettes de Belleville
Les Triplettes de Belleville
The Triplets of Belleville is a 2003 animated comedy film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet. It was released as Belleville Rendez-vous in the United Kingdom...
and he also performed this song live with Bonifassi and Charest at the 76th Academy Awards
76th Academy Awards
The 76th Academy Awards ceremony honored the best films of 2003 and was broadcast from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California on ABC beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST/8:30 p.m. EST, February 29, 2004 . The show was produced by Joe Roth and was hosted for the eighth time by comedian Billy Crystal.The...
ceremony—Morin played percussion on a bicycle during the performance.
In 2004 Bonifassi collaborated with Morin once again (performing as "DJ Champion") on his 2004 debut album, Chill'em All
Chill'em All
Chill'em All is the debut album by Canadian electronic musician Champion, released in 2004 on Saboteur Records.A 32-second cut of "No Heaven" serves as the opening theme for the 2009 Canadian TV series The Line. "No Heaven" was also used in a trailer for the First-person shooter/Role-playing game...
. The album included the hit single "No Heaven" which is a soulful and bluesy song set against heavy dance beats and noisy guitar riffs. Inspired by Negro Songs of Protest, Bonifassi sings a plaintive tune reminiscent of the work songs sung by the chain-gangs of the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
"I heard Betty singing those blues songs, and she was the girl for that job," said Morin.
With the success of Chill'em All, Bonifassi toured for over two years with "Champion & His G-Strings". In 2008 the pair recorded a version of 1957 Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Jalacy Hawkins , best known as Screamin' Jay Hawkins was an American musician, singer, and actor...
hit "I Put a Spell on You
I Put a Spell on You
"I Put a Spell on You" is a 1956 song written by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, whose recording was selected as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. It was also ranked #320 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.Although Hawkins'...
" to be used as the theme song of the Québécois film Truffe.
Les Triplettes de Belleville
Bonifassi and Charest collaborated on the soundtrack for the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville; the film's main song, " Belleville Rendez-vous", was nominated for an Oscar in 2004 and the pair performed the song, along with Maxime Morin, at the 76th Academy Awards76th Academy Awards
The 76th Academy Awards ceremony honored the best films of 2003 and was broadcast from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California on ABC beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST/8:30 p.m. EST, February 29, 2004 . The show was produced by Joe Roth and was hosted for the eighth time by comedian Billy Crystal.The...
ceremony.
Bonifassi stated in a 2004 interview that the experience of performing at the Oscars was "magnifique!"
"It was a magic moment that I shared with my husband; I thought it was brilliant!"
Her work on the Oscar-nominated film "opened doors" for her. After the buzz following her Oscars performance, she got many offers from large record companies in North America and abroad, to record jingles and an album in the same Django
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
/chanson réaliste
Chanson réaliste
Chanson réaliste, or realist song, refers to a style of music performed in France primarily from the 1880s until the end of World War II...
style; Bonifassi turned down the offers for fear of being pigeonholed, but has stated that she does not discount recording in this style in the future.
Beast
Bonifassi joined forces with percussionist, record producer, and fellow French expatExpatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
, Jean-Philippe Goncalves
Jean-Philippe Goncalves
Jean-Philippe "Jean-Phi" Goncalves is a percussionist and record producer based out of Montreal, Canada.An active member of Montreal's electronic music scene, Goncalves provides percussion for the bands Afrodizz, Plaster, Le Golden and Beast...
, to form the band Beast. The band released their first album in Nov 2008.
Beast's sound has been compared with trip-hop, only with a bit more aggression. Bonifassi's vocal stylings also lean more towards rap
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
and spoken-word. Bonifassi is the main songwriter and the music is composed and produced by Goncalves. Canadian singer-songwriter Simon Wilcox
Simon Wilcox
-Early life:Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Wilcox is the daughter of multi-media artist Sadia Sadia and Canadian rock musician David Wilcox. She is also the great niece of Canadian political scientist John Meisel. At the age of three, she was placed with a female friend of the family in...
also assisted Bonifassi (whose native tongue is French) with Beast's lyrics, which are all performed in English.
"Simon really understood my dark side and the sadness of the moment," says Bonifassi. "I really wanted to sing something lyrically rich and powerful."
Goncalves has also stated that the name Beast suits their project very well: "Betty is a real beast," he jokes, "a ."
Beast's debut album was made available on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
as of Nov 4, 2008; its official commercial release was Nov 18, 2008.
At the end of 2010 Bonifassi and Goncalves announced that they would be taking an indefinite break from the Beast project. Although when asked in a June 2011 interview for Voir
Voir
Voir is a chain of francophone alternative weekly newspapers in the Canadian province of Quebec published by Communications Voir.The magazine was founded by Pierre Paquet in November 1986.-Editions:The newspaper publishes separate local editions in:...
whether her break from Beast was a final one Bonifassi replied: "Disons que le retour de Beast n’est pas dans mes plans actuels" ("Let's say the return of Beast is not my current plans.")
Goncalves stated in an interview that the split was not due to any sort of quarrel between himself and Bonifassi. Citing lagging album sales, frustration with the record industry, the tiresome effects of touring, and familial commitments (Bonifassi's son was 9 years old at the time of the split), the band-mates said they would be working separately on their own local projects.
Solo work
During an interview with Danielle Leblanc of Radio-Canada in 2004, she discussed an album she was working on with the composer Francois D'Amour. She described the album as being very "multi-ethnic, with lots of electronic machines" and that she was hoping to find a major record label for its release. On Sep 24 of that same year, she performed some of these songs during a live solo performance at Montreal's Cabaret Music Hall. Bonifassi has not released a solo album to date.After Bonifassi and Goncalves announced that they would be taking an indefinite hiatus from the Beast project in late 2010, Bonifassi began to focus on solo projects including a performance at the Festival Montréal en lumière on Feb 24, 2011—making it her first solo performance since her break with Beast. Her performance included renditions of of songs by Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
and Berthe Sylva, as well as a song by the Franco-Monégasque composer Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...
.
Bonifassi is slated to perform at the 2011 FrancoFolies festival
Les FrancoFolies de Montréal
Les FrancoFolies de Montréal is a large annual music and performance festival held in Downtown Montreal, Quebec, featuring over 1,000 French-language performers from all over the world, as well as attracting over 500,000 visitors....
festival held in Montreal, first as part of a performance dedicated to Serge Gainsbourg on Jun 15, then in her own solo performances on the 17th and 18th. She also held two performances at the 2011 Les FrancoFolies de Montréal
Les FrancoFolies de Montréal
Les FrancoFolies de Montréal is a large annual music and performance festival held in Downtown Montreal, Quebec, featuring over 1,000 French-language performers from all over the world, as well as attracting over 500,000 visitors....
music festival on June 17th and 18th.