Monday 26 February at 6:30 pm
Rolex Learning Center Forum
This concert with Mediterranean resonances offers a warm journey through harmonious and
subtle melodies.
From Spain to Turkey, from Greece to Afghanistan, along original compositions brought by a
myriad of instruments of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, influences and tones cross in
beautiful music pieces.
- Stelios Petrakis – musician, composer and Cretan stringed-instrument maker
- Bijan Chemirani – French-Iranian percussionist
- Efrén López – Spanish multi-instrumentalist
These three virtuosi from the new generation of Mediterranean traditional musicians offer a music of luxurious beauty. Their works are certainly subtle, but one receives them weightlessly. They even take us to a strong urge to dance. Above all, one never suffers from the juxtaposition of disparate elements: the trio forms an instrument itself providing an iridescent music, shining of virtuose harmonies when necessary or more reserved and suave when they should be.
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Stelios Petrakis is a stringed-instrument maker, a composer and virtuoso instrumentalist. Initiated since his youngest age to the art of lyra, the Cretan vielle, he quickly immerses himself in the traditional eastern Mediterranean repertoires: continental Greece, the Balkans, Turkey… Ambassador of the Cretan tradition with his quartet, Stelios inspires the spirit of dance and village feasts.
Bijan Chemirani, from Marseille, is one of these heir-musicians obsessed by the conquest of new sound territories. Fed by the learned Persian tradition, of rolls and trills, he owes his mastery of tombak and daf percussions to his father Djamchid, disciple of the great Hossein Teherâni, and to his brother Keyvan. After a laborious initiation, Bijan quickly met artists that confirmed his chameleon destiny, and every year until this day he gives life to a multitude of musical dreams.
Their partner is no one but Spanish instrumentalist Efrén López who – when he does not roam the world – chose Chania for his sedentary life. The one that dreamt to be a rockstar before becoming troubadour dedicates himself to stringed and plucked instruments: hurdy-gurdy, Afghan rubab, oud, fretless guitar, bağlama or the Turkish-Mongolian kopuz.
Certainly a concert that knows no frontiers, not to be missed