"What if ..." festival
December 10 - 14, 2006
New York City
Epistrophy Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poet's Cafe
music: F.S. Blumm (Berlin) / Kinan Azmeh (Syria) / Marco Cappelli (Italy)
poetry with music: A Tribute to Pedro Pietri, presented by Chourmo (Cagliari, Sardinia).
art installation: Bryan Hamecs
December 20 - 22, 2006
Cagliari, Sardinia
Central Train Station, Santa Chiara Church
music: END & Antonello Salis / Ari Hoening & Roberto Pellegrini / Kilim Trio (Ferra, Pellegrini, Tore) / ESF (END, Stetson, Fadda) / Diablo Jimmy (Sikitikis)
schedule
Day 1 - Sunday, December 10 - $10
Epistrophy Cafe - 200 Mott Street, NYC
9PM
F.S. Blumm - guitar & electronics [2 sets]
with special guest
Luca Fadda - trumpet
11:30PM
Good Night Poems
with
Giacomo Casti - poet
JJ Hayes - poet
Simone Murru - harmonica
Doug Principato - acoustic guitar, vocals
Jason Candler - electric guitar
Day 2 - Monday, December 11 - $10
Epistrophy Cafe - 200 Mott Street, NYC
9PM
Marco Cappelli - guitar (Italy)
10PM
Kinan Azmeh - clarinet (Syria)
with
Kyle Sana - guitar
John Hatfield - hand percussion
11:30PM
Good Night Jam
with
Kinan Azmeh - clarinet
Marco Cappelli - guitar
John Hatfield - hand percussion
Luca Fadda - trumpet
Jason Candler - alto saxophone
Day 3 - Tuesday, December 12 - $5
Bowery Poetry Club - 308 Bowery, NYC
5:30 - 7:00PM
A tribute to Pedro Pietri - Part I
Presented by Chourmo (Italy)
Giacomo Casti - poet
Simone Murru - harmonica
Luca Fadda - trumpet
and
special guest
Earth People
André Martinez - drums, percussion
Jason Candler - alto saxophone
Doug Principato - acoustic guitar
Marguerite Maria Rivas - poet
Wil Wynn - poet
Day 4 - Thursday, December 14 - $5
Nuyorican Poets Cafe - 238 East 3rd St, NYC
7 - 9PM
A tribute to Pedro Pietri - Part II
Presented by Chourmo (Italy)
Giacomo Casti - poet
Simone Murru - harmonica
and
special guests
Avram Fefer - tenor saxophone
Jason Candler - alto saxophone
Luca Fadda - trumpet
F.S. Blumm
Berliner Frank Schültge aka F.S.Blumm presents a multitude of lovely popsongs and atmospheric soundscapes. He transforms colorful pictures into music, telling little stories in many layers. Ingredients of his soundkitchen are mainly acoustic instruments like piano, kalimba, vibes, guitars and an accordion. Blumm works with melodious sound, deep buried memories and inner-mind visions, and at the same time his music is determined by timeless elegance and an amazing facility, homogenous and well balanced.
F.S. Blumm was born in the city of Bremen, Northern Germany. As a child, one of his older brother’s AC/DC records impressed him so much, he begged his parents for his own guitar immediately. But he only got a recorder. After another long year of waiting and more begging, he finally got his guitar including training. In spite of (or maybe even because of) his classical training, Frank developed a taste for noise during those years. In his youthful endeavour for being different, he played in quite a few bands, highly influeneced by acts like Sonic Youth, Melvins, Boredoms and later even Gastr Del Sol. In an interview with German music mag Jazzthetik, F.S. Blumm described the results like this: "We played Bach like hardcore fugues. Fast, parallel, crooked, distorted and loud."
In 1990 he began to study music and arts in order to become a teacher. After his exams in 1996, he moved to Berlin in 1997, where he focuesed on freelancing as a musician and composer. Schültge fast became active in many different contexts. The multi instrumentalist Harald „Sack“ Ziegler from Cologne and him formed the duo Sack & Blumm. Together with Berlin based Marcel Türkowsky, he also started an instrumental band called Kinn and he finally went public as solo artist F.S. Blumm.
At the same time he started to write and produce radio plays for public radio (i.e. SWR, WDR and DLR) with his partner Christian Berner. Both have won awards, sponsorships and scholarships for their work.
Until the end of the 90s, Blumms musical interest for anything Rock slowly faded away. Instead, he became more and more active on a lot of different musical fields that cannot be summed up easily. There are a few aspects that apply to all of Blumm’s work, though. The major aspect holding together his body of work is in his own words clarity, meaning F.S. Blumm always tries to find the essence of a particular musical idea. Additionally, F.S. Blumm is quite an "acoustic" person. He’d rather beat on anything that swings and resonates, than to spend hours in front of computers and sequencers, which he considers as a waste of time. Not only because, he does not know how to use them properly, but also because this way of working is too exhausting for him. Although most of his music is completely handmade, F.S. Blumm often is paradoxically received as an electronica act, which in the first place is due to the fact that he releases on labels like Morr Music, Tomlab, Audiodregs and many more. These connections make sense, anyway, because after all, those labels think of themselves as platforms for new music.
fsblumm.free.fr
Kinan Azmeh is the only Syrian and first Arab to win the first prize at the Nicolay Rubinstein international youth competition in Moscow, Russia, 1997. He holds two BA degrees, one in Clarinet performance from Damascus high institute of music and drama where he studied with Anatoly Moratof, and BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Damascus. He completed his Masters degree and graduate diploma in music from the Juilliard School in New York, studying with Charles Neidich.
Born in Damascus, Syria in 1976, Kinan studied at the Arab conservatory of music in Damascus with Shukry Shawkey and Nicolay Viovanof. He has appeared as a soloist in performances around the wold including solo appearances at the Tchaikovsky grand hall in Moscow in 1997, Solo performances with the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra during its first American tour (UCLA's Royce hall, Orange County performing arts center, Los-Angeles, USA) with Solhi Al-Wadi conducting, BBC Proms festival at the Royal Albert hall, London, the premiere of two clarinet concertos written for him by Dutch composer Guus Janssen at Lincoln center in New York, and by Zaid Jabri at the opening of the Syrian opera house 2004.
As Principal Clarinetist, kinan performed under the baton of reputed conductors such as John Adams, Roger Norrington, Daniel Barenboim,James DePriest, Charles Dutoit, Itzhak Perlman, Julius Rudel, Larry Rachleff, Ahmad el Saedi, and Solhi Al-Wadi . In addition to his interest in Classical Music as a soloist, Chamber Musician and Orchestra member, he enjoys improvising on his Clarinet and tenor Saxophone. He has appeared as soloist with Sylvain Kassab, Marcel Khalife, Elliott Sharp, Kani Karaca and Hot house Jazz band, as well as being member of the New York-based NEOLEXICA group and the Syrian pop group Kulna Sawa".
Kinan co-started the ensemble “Hewar" with Issam Rafea in the year 2003 and led the group in two American tours 2004, 2005, including performances at the reputed Kennedy center. He is also a frequent guest faculty at the Apple hill center for Chamber music in New Hampshire.
Kinan’s compositions include works for solo Violin, Solo Clarinet with Max/Msp, works for mixed quintets and interactive works for Clarinet, computers and live illustrations with artist Kevrok Mourad as well as the original sound track for the film "Rigodon" by Keith Sicat and Sari Dalena and "Not for sale" and "the day i died" by the Iranian film maker Maryam Keshavarz.
www.kinanazmeh.com
Marco Cappelli was born in Napoli, 1965, and has played guitar since age 10. As a teenager, after some years of playing blues, rock as well as in Neapolitan folk music bands, he studied classical guitar and graduated with honors from the S. Cecilia Conservatory in Rome.
His collaborations span from contemporary music to jazz and improvised music: with the "Carmen Project" by Enrico Rava he played in the most important jazz Festivals in Europe (Saalfelden, Willisau, ...) as well as in Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, ...). He also works with such musicians as Han Bennik, Michel Godard, Franco Piersanti, Giovanni Sollima, Markus Stockhausen ...
Nowadays, Marco Cappelli follows along an original artistic trip, in which free and easy he changes from complex written music to improvisation: his solo concerts connect the guitar repertory of the last century with more extreme avant-garde music of recent times.
He is regularly invited by classical music concert societies as well as by festivals of jazz and improvised music, and plays many premieres of such composers as Junghae Lee, Giorgio Tedde, Claudio Lugo or the EGP (Extreme Guitar Project: 10 new pieces written for him from composers of the Down Town NYC music scene).
He currently teaches at the V. Bellini Conservatory in Palermo, where with his students he formed the "Ensemble del Conservatorio V. Bellini di Palermo" in 1998, and recorded for the label "Teatro del Sole" and the magazine "Guitart" a CD with music of the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer. For the same label he recorded "YUN MU", a guitar solo CD which was acclaimed as one of the 10 best CDs of the year 2002 by ALIAS magazine.
www.marcocappelli.com
The Chourmo collective - a group of cultural activists of the Cagliari area of Sardinia - during the last few years, and mostly in the Marina quarter (in collaboration with social, creative, handicraft trades) has organized, promoted and supported artistic and cultural productions and manifestations of varied kind, often supported by organizations of solidarity and voluntary service. Since October 2003, Chourmo has produced and organized several editions of “Marina Café Noir” - Festival of applied literatures, theater, music and film. The festival is actively involved in the realization of original productions and workshops, creating programs that combine the talents of artists who may have never worked together before. The collective sees itself placed side by side with the writers, musicians, performers, and film-makers coming from the world, and being able to construct new acquaintances between various artistic attitudes. The association is always planning initiatives and collaborations for future editions.
www.chourmo.it/
In March 2001, a group of multi-talented musicians and friends premiered Waking the Living, a television broadcast performance, and the free-form music group Earth People was born. Deeply rooted in almost every major musical tradition, ancient and modern, the members of Earth People have combined to form the vanguard of the modern avant-garde.
www.earthpeople.tv
photo gallery
The Feast
F.S. Blumm
F.S. Blumm meets Luca Fadda
Kyle Sana and Kinan Azmeh
Marco Cappelli
Doug Principato, JJ Hayes, Jason Candler, Simone Murru
Luca Fadda
Giacomo Casti (Chourmo)
Jason Candler
Jason Candler, Marco Cappelli, Luca Fadda, Kinan Azmeh, John Hatfield
photography by Massimo Congia
