JAZZBINA 2010: BACE QUINTET & GUESTS @ Istria

Traditional oriental & Balkan music & jazzy moods

Aleksandar Petrov, Bachar Khalifov, Theodossi Spassov, Peter Herbert and Vasil Hadzimanov have one thing in common: a deep knowledge of the traditional music of their countries (respectively Macedonia, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Serbia). The four of them are also influenced by jazz, world music, contemporary music and electro-acoustic music. This new project created by Aleksandar Petrov invites us to an acoustic world in which written music and improvisations are mixed. The compositions of Aleksandar, Theodosii, Vasil and l3achar refer to their various influences: melodies from Balkans, harmony influenced by jazz, oriental and macedonian rhythms.

Aleksandar Petrov is a Macedonian born percussionist and a composer. His instrument of predilection is the Tapan, a traditional drum of his country with which he's been the rhythmical anchor of traditional folk orchestras since age of twelve. He lives now in Paris where he's had many encounters with jazz musicians. He is an astonishing and a creative musician who composes and plays an innovating and interesting music, never satisfied with placing side by side the music of his origins with other music, but mixing them to obtain a new elixir.

Bachar Khalif is born in Beirut in 1983. His life is divided between performing and his classical percussion study in the National Superior Conservatory of music in Paris. This very brilliant young man plays with talent the vibraphone, darbouka, req and cajon. He uses every percussion as a solo instrument and his playing is marked by uncanny intuition and a masterful improvisational dexterity.

Vasil Hadzimanov is a pianist and lives in Belgrade after having spent five years in the United States. He studied in Boston from 1992 to 1995, in the famous Berklee College of Music and then moved to New York where he performed with great artists. Vasil is an appreciated musician for his pertinent way of playing rhythmical musical phrases which are a marvelous mixture of his own traditional influences and the be-bop. He reviews an instrumental technique which allows him to play a big range of sonorities with an ability to imply them while playing piano.

Theodossi Spassov a musician from Bulgaria, a sensational virtuoso on kaval, has a reputation of experimenting with musical styles and different musicians coming from various cultural and musical backgrounds. He has built an instrumental technique on his own, one that gives him freedom of expression and a variety of sounds that is rather unlikely to come out of such a simple instrument as the kaval.

Peter Herbert, born in 1960 in Austria, lived of 1989 to 2003 in New York and since settled in Paris.
Formed in Austria with the traditional double bass and the piano, it studies the Jazz in Berklee College of Boston.
Peter Herbert is a bubbling musician of activity which clears to take shape a way in the world of the improvised musics, and which leaves traces and its prints derrieres him.
It met on its road of many very large musicians whose John Abercrombie, Art Farmer, Marc Copland, Art Blakey, Clifford Jordan, John Clark, Steve Lacy, Mick Goodrick, Kenny Wheeler, Daniel Humair, Whoody Show, Sheila Jordan, Vienna Art Orchestrated.
It recorded more than 80 albums.

Gazmend Bericha born in 1970 from an Albanian father and a mother gypsy, in Srbica (Yugoslavia) is one of the largest violonist of Balkans than account the traditional music. It saw in Skopje since 1989 and it is at that time that it meets celebrates it singer Dzan Sever with whom it always collaborates. Musician much in demand for the festivities it occurs also much on scene and in particular with Ferus Mustavov, Esma Redzepova. He meets into 1999 the musicians of the Zlust project and opens at that time with other musical styles. Thereafter it renews the experiment to work with musicians of other universes and of which musicians of jazz. It works with Yoshiko Chuma, Damo Suzuki, akosh Szeveleny, Nikola Kodjabashja, Criss Cultler, Raymond Boni…