Tristan Foison


Tristan Foison is a French musician and composer. He is most famous for attempting to claim a composition by Alfred Desenclos as his own, but actually fabricated many details about his life.

Early life

Foison was born and raised in France. He was adopted by Michele Foison, a professional musician and student of Olivier Messiaen. He learned to play the Ondes Martenot and later tried to study it at the Conservatoire de Paris, but was rejected. Tristan Foison then studied first at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Boulogne-Billancourt and from 1985 at the Conservatoire Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. He now lives near Paris.

Awards

He claimed to have won the Peabody Mason International Piano Competition, the Geneva International Music Competition and the Georges Bizet Competition, as well as conducted orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra or the Orchestre de Paris. He also claimed to have been chosen by Vladimir Ashkenazy to perform with him the Concerto for 2 Pianos by Mozart with the Paris Orchestra in 1987. Later that year, he emigrated to the US and settled in Atlanta. He made his living as a musician, worked at the Peggy Still School of Music and was music director of the Rome Symphony Orchestra in Rome, Georgia. He performed in concerts on the piano and the Ondes Martenot and composed classical music.

Compositions

On 18 May 2001 the Requiem by Tristan Foison was performed by the Capitol Hill Chorale of Washington, D.C. and was marked as the world premiere of the composition, which Tristan Foison claimed to have written. The Requiem was recognised immediately in the concert as plagiarism, because a person from the audience had sung the work a year earlier with his chorus and knew that it was composed by French composer Alfred Desenclos. After verification, Foison was confronted by the choral director. Shortly after this talk he vanished from the classical music scene. All known biographical information comes from his curriculum vitae.

Aftermath

After the discovery of the Desenclos fraud, journalists checked his CV. They found that the following other claims were false: