Born in 1981, Guillaume began playing the violin at the age of 5. After studying classical violin, he learnt to know and love other musical aesthetics under the guidance of a great violinist and teacher of jazz improvisation Didier Lockwood. He also trained under Octavio Lopez, renowned contemporary music composer. Since 2001, he participated in many music and film projects that allow him to perform regularly both in France and abroad.
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The Corn Potato String Band , a four member band comprising of Aaron Jonah Lewis, Lindsay McCaw, Aviva Steigmeyer and Roy Pilgrim, has delighted audiences with its driving fiddle tunes and harmonious singing across the United States, Europe, and Mexico. The band members are all multi-instrumentalists who are dedicated to continuing the traditional fiddle and banjo music and dance of central southern part of the United States.
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One of Sydney’s most in demand Saxophonist, Matt Keegan regularly performs throughout Australia and around the world. He appears on over 50 albums, is a featured soloist for many well-known groups both past and present and has performed at music festivals across the globe.
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Abaji was born in Lebanon, arrived in France in 1976 just after war. Music is a tradition in the family so he began the guitar at eleven followed by other instruments: clarinet and percussions and oud and bouzouki and flutes brought from his travels all around the world. Later he worked on the transformation of instruments to synthesize his musical passions: Indian music, Oriental music and blues.
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Originally from Italy, Giuliano Modarelli is a virtuosic guitarist unique in his style. During his early musical training and throughout his research and experience, he has explored many different genres of music leading him to develop a unique, hybrid style which is now instantly recognizable in his sound.Having studied Jazz at University, he went on to develop through the Indian Classical tradition and his unique and exceptionally innovative style is a subtle blend of Arabic, Flamenco, Latin and European Folk.
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She is a singer, an actor, a writer, a social activist and a teacher. She marched for peace with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and works with a number of NGOs to alleviate poverty in the poorest neighborhoods. She is Lee-Alison Sibley, an American who loves India. Lee has a Master of Music degree and a Master of Education degree. She has sung, taught, lectured and acted all over the world. From folk music to opera to Broadway, Lee has done it all, and while living in Kolkata added Rabindrasangeet to her repertoire with her album “The Distant Near.”
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Bengalis take Rabindranath Tagore as ‘Biswa kabi'! Inspired by music from around India and the rest of the world, Tagore was known for blending Hindustani and Carnatic ragas with the simple melodies of folk songs, be they from the Bauls in Bengal or the bards of Scotland or Ireland. He was also the first Indian and the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Duo NIHZ believes in out of the box performances. Thus they integrate music, theatre, narrative art and visual arts in their performances. Together BobbyRootveld on guitar and Sanna van Elst on recorders forms Duo NIHZ. This ensemble is from the Netherlands. NIHZ in Dutch stands for ‘Niet-In-Het-Zwart’ and in English this translates to ‘Not-Wearing-Black-Clothes’. As Bobby elaborates, “We do two kinds of music. One is music with theatre and comedy.
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András Csáki was born in Budapest, Hungary, where he currently resides. He began to play the guitar when he was ll years old. In 2005, Csáki won the international guitar competition in Vienna, the “Forum Gitarre.” That year at Beograd, Serbia-Montenegro, he took first prize in the XXXV International Jeunesses Musicales Competition. In 2004, he won the Jan Edmund Jurkowski International Guitar Competition in Tychy, Poland.
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Hungary for the classical guitar
Igino Giovanni Brunori and Virginia Nicoli of Samvad are an innovative musical duo crafting new sounds from ancient materials. Their performances are meditative journeys through a rich landscape of melody and rhythm, using bansuri (Indian bamboo flute), silver flute and saxophone. Abhijit Ganguly spoke to them.
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Italian duo excelling in Indian Classical Music
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A saxophone in Indian Classical music! Why not? Says Indian - American Mittal
Evelyn Hii hails from sarawak and classically trained in the US. She is the proprietor of No Black Tie. It's stage has seen the Malaysia's top singers ans musicians and the region's best, not including an impressive lineup of international acts over the years and most importantly, The watering hole of choices for KL's intellectual, cultural, social and corporate elite. She speaks to Abhijit Ganguly about the jazz scene in South East Asia, during the official launch of Rooh Music's website.
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A great jazz artist stirs and grips the audience’s emotions
World music has come of age. For Western percussionists, it is now essential to have some experience and knowledge in other world traditions. Not just to be able to survive with a few gigs as a musician, but also so that they can better appreciate other cultures and negotiate intercultural relationships, which increasingly define our modern world.
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Creativity and Technique must feed off each other
Zoltan Orosz has inherited the love of the accordion from his father, who noticed early the outstanding talent of his son. Zoltan was four years old when he got his first accordion with 8 basses. In 1977, when he was only 11 years old, he started his studies at a Bela Bartok music conservatory in Budapest. There, he mastered playing not only the accordion, but the organ as well.
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Accordion, nowadays, has its own renaissance - Zoltan Orosz
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"What I love most of the classical guitar is the intimacy one gets when playing the instrument"
Channe is a singer in Radiant Arcadia which comprises of a band of 12 women of Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith backgrounds. She speaks to Abhijit Ganguly on the sidelines of SUFI SUTRA 2014 organised by banglanatok.com.
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Society has to learn to show respect for women
Sarah is a mother, singer and peace maker. Sarah is a singer in Radiant Arcadia which comprises of a band of 12 women of Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith backgrounds. She speaks to Abhijit Ganguly on the sidelines of SUFI SUTRA 2014 organised by banglanatok.com.
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Women should strive to empower themselves with knowledge
ICCR as a part of their Horizon series presented a musical evening featuring The Shubh Saran Presentation. The Shubh Saran presentation is a contemporary jazz, funk, neo soul, and fusion project led by guitarist and composer, Shubh Saran. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music and a recipient of the Berklee Achievement Scholarship,. Saran has honed his skills as a versatile guitarist blending jazz, neo-soul, blues, and Indian music.
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"I think the basic requirement is a lot of passion for music and making good music" - Shubh Saran
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The Accordian : from Jazz to Baroque
To be an artist today means facing some age-old restrictions, whether economic or social. Women, however, face specific challenges when it comes to artistic freedom. Add in religious conservative values — and that makes things a bit trickier. For female artists who are also Muslims, there can be enormous challenges in bringing their work to the public space, and there have been some projects aimed at amplifying the stories and works of Muslim women. Annette Bellaoui is one such lady.
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Music cuts across borders and finds a common theme everywhere. A visiting troupe of Tunisian Sufi musicians,who was recently in India, told that their members were struck by the essential spirituality of much of Indian music. And this is the country that sparked the Arab Spring, a phenomenon in which local music played a major role.
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Mechket in search of enlightenment in India
Recently, Mishko M'Ba & the Jaco Pastorius Tribute Band performed at the Congo square jazz fest 2014. Abhijit Ganguly spoke to Mishko M'Ba at the sidelines of the event. Born in 1962 in France, Mishko M'Ba is a composer, arranger, producer, bass guitarist and pianist. He performed on numerous French and international scenes from the 80's.
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"I can see more and more young musicians interested by the Jazz" - Mishko M'Ba
Ingranaggi della Valle is a new young band from Rome with Flavio Gonnelllini on guitar, Mattia Liberati on keyboards, Antonio Coronato on bass, Marco Gennarini on violin, Alessandro Disciullo on guitar and keyboards, Paolo Motta on vocals and Shanti Colucci on drums and percussion.
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“Keep studying hard and develop your skill, your ideas and your creativity!”- Shanti Colucci
New York-based Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd is acclaimed as one of the most talented guitarists of his generation. He has been described by The Washington Post as “truly evocative,” and by Classical Guitar Magazine as “a player who deserves to be heard.”
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The one piece of advice I think important for classical guitarists is to play chamber music- Rupert Boyd
The musical traditions of Turkey have been brought to the United States by Berkeley, California based multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and folklorist Latif Bolat.
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“As long as the artists do their home works with getting to know the other culture, working together can create wonderful results.”- Latif Bolat
Bill Shotton holds a Bachelor's and Master's in Music Theory. He has won several awards for music composition and song-writing. Bill has many years of experience teaching music and directing musical productions for young students, most recently at The Todd Academy, a private school in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Click on the link to read more"Most young people are naive about the amount hard work and dedication it takes to succeed in a creative field" - Bill Shotton
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“We prefer to stay underground rather than compromise on taste”- Yuvraj Chhetri
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"I think music is critical in these times. Not just music for entertainment, but music to help us become more introspective" - Aditya Prakash
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A Colombian team brushes up Kolkata’s 80-year-old jazz links
As a teenager, she used to go to a lot of concerts. She fell in love with percussion seeing a great African drumming performance. Immediately she felt this music was her world and felt she had to take part in it. She is Joannie Labelle. Joannie Labelle, known for her sensibility and her viral groove, can charm an audience as soon as her fingers strike the drums. She studied Latin percussion with teachers Normand Hervieux, Alain Labrosse, Luc Boivin, and Paul Picard. Two years ago, she started exploring Indian drumming (mridangam) with master Puvialagan Mayarajah.
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“Develop your self-confidence and be your own best friend” - Joannie Labelle
Born in the UK, Saad traveled to the US, Luxembourg and Zambia before settling in Bangladesh in 1998. He has been working as a pianist and bass guitarist, performing both eastern and western music. He is also working as a producer and an engineer, with both studio and live sound. He has composed the background score for one of the episodes of Al Jazeera’s ‘Witness’ programme on Bangladesh’s Cholera Wars.
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Musical experiments and technology aid creativity
Filipino guitarist Ramoncito Carpio started to play guitar at age 12. He decided to study guitar formally at age 17 at the extension program of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Music.
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“It’s really not that difficult for people to appreciate classical guitar music, we just need to create awareness and expose people to it".- Ramoncito ‘Monching’ Carpio
Layba Diawara was born in a family of musiciens in Faranah (Guinea, West Africa) in 1961. He played as a guitarist in different regional and national orchestras before he was asked to join the famous national orchestra “Bembeya Jazz International” in Guinea’s capital Conakry. In 1985 he made his first tour to Europe and the United States.
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“Most of our songs are meant to honour our ancestors, to connect people or to give advice on good behaviour.” - Layba Diawara
Kevin Loh is a UK-based, Singapore classical guitarist and an HSBC Youth Excellence Award Recipient. At the age of twelve, Kevin was talent scouted by The Yehudi Menuhin School via his YouTube Channel and was awarded a grant by The Rolling Stones to study at the prestigious school.
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“I hope that with the guitar, I can help contribute back to society by raising funds for good causes and at the same time raise awareness of the classical guitar”-Kevin Loh
Ron is an American guitarist, songwriter, recording artist and producer. Ron is also the lead guitarist of Guns N Roses band. He speaks to Abhijit Ganguly on the sidelines of The Festival Chapter III in Kolkata produced by E365 Media Solutions.
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The future of the music industry lies in streaming services
Recently, Samuel T. Klemke and Oegmundur Þór Johannesson visited the classical guitar student community at the Calcutta School of Music for a seminar / workshop. They both founded The Global Guitar Institute (GGI) which provides classical guitar lessons, seminars and concerts rooted in the European tradition of classical music. Samuel T. Klemke is a German classical guitarist.
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Classical Guitar for everyone
ALDOC is the new band led by ex-Gráda frontman and Lord of the Rings soloist Alan Doherty. Produced by his long time collaborator Gerry Paul, “From Tallaght to Halle” was recorded between Germany and New Zealand and the music is driven by the Irish flute, yet lifted brilliantly by settings derived from Doherty and Paul’s love of urban sounds.
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One Flute to Rule Them All
John Coltrane, one of the leading jazz saxophonists of the 1960s had a kind of ‘spiritual awakening’ that led him to start studying Indian religion and philosophy and even Indian raga music, with Pandit Ravi Shankar as his mentor. He calls it a search for a “multicultural theory of musical transcendence” based on the mystical principles of the spiritual traditions of Indian ragas.
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Saxophone and Indian Classical music
Prof. T M Hoffman is born in the USA, spent 40 years in Asia, mainly Japan & India. Trained by top masters in classical piano (Grace Mundorf Myers, USA), Japanese flute, shakuhachi (Living National Treasure Yamaguchi Goro, Japan), Hindustani classical vocal music (PT. Ganesh Prasad Mishra, Benares/Lucknow) and tabla (Dr S K Varma, Lucknow). Honours graduate of four universities in USA, Japan & India.
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Music culture and hardware/software R & D in a North/South Asian context
Famous Italian opera personalities Angela Papale and Fabio Marra visited Kolkata, India last month. They were in the cultural capital of India to attend a workshopas a part of their Yuva Music Festival organised by Academy for Musical Excellence (AMEC). The ensuing festival consists of 20 concerts, 10 competitions, six talk shows, and one international workshop and master class.
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Kolkata’s music community gets a taste of Italian opera music
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"People play their Personality" - Patrick Farrell
Gianni Denitto is a proud artist of Universal Music Italy, Roland Europe, Rampone & Cazzani Italian Handmade Saxophones and ‘One of the best Italian jazz musicians according to the charts of “Musica Jazz” magazine. Gianni Denitto has a wealth of experience in jazz, classical, electronic, sound design and rock music. Gianni completed a Bachelor Degree with honours both in classical music and in jazz after 11 years studying at the Conservatory in Torino, Italy. From 2013 he started traveling around the world playing his solo saxophone performance with electronics, doing jazz concerts with local musicians and teaching in music academies and universities.
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"Maverick of Sax-Tech" - Gianni Denitto
Australian born multi-instrumentalist and composer Bart Stenhouse has a deep interest in jazz, world, fusion and improvisational styles of music and specializes in the guitar, bass guitar and electric mandolin. His playing style blends different cultures and styles to re-define musical genres and experiment with sonic landscapes. He has been fine tuning his skills in guitar and bass guitar over the past twenty years, completing a Bachelor of Music in Jazz at the Queensland Conservatorium in 2005 and continuing to study privately with some of the world's best. This has included study with North Indian Classical maestro Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, who plays the Chaturangui (Indian Slide Guitar).
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“Music that explores improvisation excites me.”- Bart Stenhouse
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“I think the amalgamation of jazz and world music is going to become more and more prevalent in the years to come.”- Stich Wynston, Shuffle Demons
Shoichiro Goto is a self-employed musician, guitarist and composer. He is a disciple of Pt. Debashish Bhattacharya. He plays North Indian Classical Raag on the Electric Guitar. Abhijit Ganguly spoke to him on the sidelines of India International Guitar Festival 2016.
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Shoichiro Goto-Playing North Indian Classical Raag on Electric guitar
Daniel's first employment in the entertainment business was at Tulsa Oklahoma's rock radio station, KMOD. His mother was employed at the station as the accountant and this afforded him the opportunity for part time employment during summer months.
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“ By making room for others in your music you will find a great deal of space for your own growth and expansion. “ - Daniel Shane Thomas
The American Sufi Project was started by a group of artists and seekers who meet at the weekly gatherings for Zikr (remembrance of God) at the Dergah-Al-Farah in New York City. The intention of this project is to transmit through music and art, a taste of the divine love and interconnectedness that they have felt participating in these spiritual and musical practices.
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The essence of Sufism can never be destroyed, though its popularity certainly can add 'noise in the signal'
Indian classical music creating waves in the west is nothing new. Besides many western musicians are known to have got inspired from Indian classical music from maestros in India. Many westerners have come to learn the nuances of Indian classical music. On the one hand, the music tastes of younger Indians are shifting towards western music, while on the other the Indian diaspora as well as westerners are increasingly becoming interested in Indian classical music.
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Healing through Nada Yoga
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" I think it would be healthy if the next generation could focus on the music again, rather than on the filter for their next Instagram picture "
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Italian Embassy Cultural Centre presented a concert by the Giuliana Soscia Trio. Soscia is a talented Italian accordion player who has worked with famous orchestras like the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and the Parco della Musica Jazz Orchestra. The concert started with pieces composed by Giuliana Soscia, “First Impression”, “Contemporary Tango”, “Sonata per Luna crescente” which were followed by “Olhos de gato” by Carla Bley, well known American jazz composer.
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“My sound and compositions portray my emotions!”- Giuliana Soscia
Ghostape is an enigmatic and inspiring experimental electronic artist from Switzerland, who uses recorded sounds to create vivid soundscapes merging into abstract pop & electronic artifacts.recently, He performed at the Experimenter Kolkata.
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"For me music is a space of freedom"
Walter Fischbacher is a renowned New York based pianist, composer and recording engineer. Already an accomplished performer and professor in Austria, he followed his dream and moved to New York in 1994, but he never lost his foothold in the European music scene, building his reputation as one of the most sought after pianists around.
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"Try to be creative, create your own market, your own network, your own product."
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"Follow your goal. It will be hard, but without rain, there is no rainbow"
Recently, Alliance française du Bengale in partnership with The Calcutta School of Music presented French festive rock band Le Pied de la Pompe! Known to perform on various genres including a mix of pop, rock and electro. The band members include Gérôme Briard, Erwann Cornec and Fred Mariolle.
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Move your feet to Le Pied de la Pompe!
Gal Maestro is an 24 years old Israeli Double bass player . Gal graduated from "Telma-Yellin" High School of the Performing Arts, where she majored in classical music. Today she plays in various ensembles such as the "Israeli Andalusian Orchestra", "Neta Elkayam" group, pop and country ensembles, theater and more. She was here to perform at the International Guitar Festival 2016.
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"I have no doubt that arts and music can form a bridge between cultures, religions, gender and age."
Pedro Carmona-Alvarez is a Chilean/Norwegian artist. He releases his music under the name Moonpedro And The Sinking Ship since 2007. He has released three records, Ed Wood (2007), Homegrown (2013) and this year Let´s, Pig (2016). He is also a well known writer of novels, poems and essays. His books are translated to several languages, such as English, German, Danish, Turkish.
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Love The Corn Potato String Band......
ReplyDeleteWhat fun music they play....!!
Thank you Kev. Yes their music is cool!!
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