Fred Lewin
France
Frederick Joseph Lewin (Nîmes, France, July 31st 1978), known as Fred Lewin, is a composer of contemporary Gospel music, singer, pianist, and gospel choir conductor. He is also the founder and Artistic Director of GN/AS Gospel, the largest gospel choir in France and one of the oldest Gospel Choirs in Montpellier (est. 1997). He began playing classical music (piano, trumpet, and french horn) in the local conservatory when he was a child, but he got fired because he did not meet the standards according to his music teachers. Anyway, he did not give up on his passion for music, and life lead him again to it: he began singing in a local gospel group at the age of 17 when he had to replace a member that could not attend a concert, and at the same period he began conducting a Gospel Choir, having to learn to play the piano again. He just played the piano with 2 fingers at that time! But he knew that his place was in music and with the Gospel, so he worked hard to be able to accomplish the mission he received. From 1997 to 2003 he conducted 8 to 10 choirs every week in different places in France, and when he was just 19 years old he founded the Good News Gospel Choir and the Alleluia Singers, who afterward were grouped under the name of GN/AS Gospel, being nowadays one of his more knowledgeable successes: the largest gospel choir of France with more than 150 singers.
During those years, he discovered and experimented with several music genres, being a natural explorer, non-conformist, and always eager of learning, this autodidact musician with his powerful baritone voice, started touring professionally with his band The Soul Travelers Quartet in 1998, performing all over France and Europe in places like the Cahors Blues Festival, Festival de Gospel de Montreux (Switzerland), Festival International de Jazz de Rive de Gier, Festival Jazz en Artois–Arras, Festival d’Eté de Valence, Enghien Jazz Festival, Festival Jazz Equinoxe (Bastia, Corsica), Festival Jazz de Münster (Germany) and many more venues in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Belgium, while in the meantime Fred kept working with GN/AS Gospel. In 2012 Fred launched his project, FredL Gospel, releasing the album LifeXperienced, recorded between Montpellier, Paris, and Brussels (Uni’sons–Montpellier, Euro Gospel Studio–Brussels–Drum Service-Paris).
In 2018, for the celebration of the 20th Anniversary of GN/AS Gospel, together with a special anniversary tour, performing in the renowned Zenith Sud (Montpellier, France) and Sala BARTS (Barcelona, Spain), Fred Lewin and GN/AS Gospel release in 2019 the álbum ReLOVution (recorded live at the Zenith Sud and mastered at Uni’sons Studios Montpellier), an authentic revolution of the European Gospel genre, where he takes you to an audacious and fast-paced journey in which his compositions break all schemes and Gospel meets with pop, rock, funk, soul, Latin rhythms and even Arabic or Hindu sounds.
