BIO

Mike Fauré has made numerous appearances worldwide over the years. During his career, he has performed with Arthur Conley, Albert Collins, Janis Ian, Peaches & Herb, Mary Lane, Buddy Guy, The Commitments, Oscar Tony Junior, Della Reese, Buddy Whittington, Dave Millsap and many others. During the early years he co-founded the band Hammak, along with drummer Anton Fig of David Letterman’s house band. 

At the age of ten Mike heard Glen Miller's "In The Mood" on the radio, and he knew he wanted to play a horn. In his mid-teens he played trumpet, later switching to the sax. After a few years of playing semi-pro, his professional career started in the Cape with the region's premier band at the time, the Ronnie Singer Sound, working seven nights a week at the Navigator's Den. That band provided a fertile apprenticeship, in that the broad repertoire was a very mixed bag combining pop and rock tunes of the day, mixed with jazz standards along with some of the early blues-inspired fusion music coming out of Britain at the time. This solid local grounding launched a career which has gone on to encompass a lifetime of recording and TV work, sessions and gigs worldwide, highlighted by associations with some of the international greats of the music industry.

He relocated to London, England from Cape Town shortly after attending art college. In the United Kingdom, he was in his element working with classic-soul bands; all the rage at the time. The bands played up and down the M1 Motorway and virtually every corner of England, Scotland and Wales. Later, he joined the Eddie Lee Mattison Soul band which was based in Paris, France and played engagements all over Europe with them. Back in the UK, he went on the road as a member of Arthur Conley’s touring band while Conley was enjoying the success of his hit, "Sweet Soul Music". after which he moved to Boston, MA in the early seventies and studied at the Berklee College of Music.

For many years Mike was a prominent fixture in the Dallas/Fort Worth area playing with Texas blues and R&B bands. 

Chicago is now his home, where he is active on the local scene with several bands. He has been a regular fixture in Mary Lane's "No Static Blues Band" for several years. They can often be seen performing at Buddy Guy's Legends club in downtown Chicago.

Besides his live work, the distinctive sound of Mike's saxophone has been heard on countless television and radio commercials, movie and television soundtracks, and on other artistes' records in just about every genre imaginable. He has had three albums on the market in his own name, Southern Sunrise. Voice of the Wind and the EMI release, Mike Fauré - Sax.

Over the years, he put together the bands Soul Purpose, Steam Machine, Brass Tacks and the Texas Tenor Soul Packet. 

Mike has always considered himself more of an R&B/rock/blues/soul player, even though all his early influences were mainstream jazz players, (the  first record he ever bought was Miles Davis' "Changes"). Later, it was players mainly in the so-called Texas Tenor style that really grabbed his attention; players like Stanley Turrentine, Wilton Felder of the Crusaders, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Plas Johnson, Boots Randolph, The Mar-Keys,  Bill Dogget and others, were major influences. Then when King Curtis' sax style hit the airwaves, he knew he'd found his niche!

He plays with taste and restraint, and his warm and seasoned tone and naturally easy style result in the kind of sax that just about everyone enjoys hearing.