With their “Janoska style” the four members of the Janoska Ensemble have developed a breathtakingly virtuosic and profoundly personal vision of music, which they interpret in a thoroughly modern way. Among unifying factors are their family ties and an inexhaustible inventiveness that allows them to explore a wide range of works from popular classics to compositions that they have written themselves and, finally, idiosyncratic arrangements of jazz, pop and world music. For Live in Bratislava the four Janoskas have chosen to present a picture of Vienna as a cultural melting pot, lacing it with irony and wit, and evincing a very real delight in music-making that time and again takes them beyond the confines of the Austrian capital. Virtuoso classics by Franz Waxman, Niccolò Paganini and Pablo de Sarasate are heard alongside a Viennese work by Fritz Kreisler and operetta themes by Johann Strauss combined with the strains of a csárdás and music from the Balkans, to say nothing of a number of flights of fancy across the Atlantic to the world of the tango and rumba and of jazz improvisations.
Anoushka Shankar – Traveller
Sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar is one of the leading figures in World Music today. She is deeply rooted in Indian classical music, having studied exclusively
with her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, from the age of nine. Thriving as a composer, she has been exploring fertile ground in the crossover between Indian music
and a variety of genres including flamenco, electronica, jazz and Western classical music. In her latest album ‘Traveller’ she finds her way into the nuances of modern flamenco through the vivid lens of Hindustani technique. The film features a concert at the Festival de Músiques Religioses I Del Món De Girona on July 3rd, 2011.
Rudolstadt Festival 2016 – Anoushka Shankar
Anoushka Shankar was born in London but mainly raised in San Diego, California. She was seven when she first got lessons on the sitar from her prominent father, Ravi Shankar. She grew up with Indian classical music but also but western pop and youth culture which today results in her wish to cross borders and to free the sitar from its alleged limitations as an instrument for Hindustani classical music.
Justin Nozuka plays Avo Session
The Canadian singer-songwriter, Justin Nozuka is an exceptional talent. On his debut album ‘Holly’, which has been released in Europe, Canada, Japan and the United States, he was compared with such greats as Marvin Gaye, Jeff Buckley and Ben Harper – even though Nozuka was only 19 years old at the time. His follow up album ‘You I Wind Land And Sea’ was released in 2010 and it proofs that Justin just got even better.
Mariza plays Avo Session
Music is language. Nowhere else is that more obvious than in Portuguese, where a single word became the key to an entire culture of music: ‘Saudade’. Happiness mixed with sadness is the blues of Portugal and Brazil, where Mariza also lived for a while, influenced too by the musical rhythms of that country’s popular music.
Yo Yo Ma – The Goat Rodeo Sessions
The Goat Rodeo Sessions is an ambitious and groundbreaking project that brings together four string virtuosos: world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolinist Chris Thile. While each artist is a prominent figure in his own music sphere, they have come together as a unified ensemble on a most remarkable and organic cross-genre project. The music, including two tracks with female vocalist Aoife O’Donovan, feels both new and familiar – it’s composed and improvised, uptown and down home, funky and pastoral and above all, uniquely American. A goat rodeo, according to Urban Dictionary, “is about the most polite term used by aviation people (and others in higher risk situations) to describe a scenario that required about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it.”
Tracks: Attaboy / Quarter Chicken Dark / Helping Hand / Where’s My Bow? / Here And Heaven (featuring vocals by Aoife O’Donovan & Chris Thile) / Franz And The Eagle / Less is Moi / Hill Justice / No One But You (featuring vocals by Aoife O’Donovan & Chris Thile) / 13:8 / Goat Rodeo // Also available: Making Of: 23′ min. The soundtrack was awarded with
Hugh Masekela feat. Mahotella Queens plays AVO Session
Before jazz had a name and “world music” was a concept, a young trumpet player emerged from another hemisphere and landed alongside some of the greatest icons in American music. Louis Armstrong sent him a trumpet. Harry Belafonte arranged for him to come to New York City to study music. That man, Hugh Masekela, born out of apartheid South Africa , has consistently toured worldwide and his genre-bending dynamism has led to his own icon status. The Mahotella Queens were far more than just a female chorus: their velvety voices, their charisma and their sense of show and stage were an essential element in the band.
The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood Music Festival
Founded in 1998 by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Silk Road Project is an internationally minded nonprofit arts, cultural and educational organization that promotes innovation and learning through the arts. Its vision is to connect the world’s neighbourhoods by bringing together artists and audiences around the globe. The Silk Road Ensemble is a collective of musicians, composers and performing artists from more than 20 countries around the world. In sharing traditions from various cultures, the Ensemble develops and performs new music and multimedia pieces, exploring and expanding contemporary musical crossroads. The Silk Road Ensemble has recorded five albums and performed to critical acclaim throughout Asia, Europe and North America. The concert presented here took place at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, in June 2012. Concert: 105′ // Documentary: 95′
Amadou & Mariam play Baloise Session
Amadou & Mariam are a Grammy Award-nominated musical duo from Mali. Known as „the blind couple from Mali“, Amadou & Mariam have produced music that mixes traditional Mali sound with rock guitars, Syrian violins, Cuban trumpets, Egyptian ney, Indian tablas and Dogon percussion. In combination these elements have been called „Afro-blues“.
Patricia Kaas plays Baloise Session
‘In order to sing Edith Piaf, you need life experience and courage,’ says Patricia Kaas. What she means is that one must understand the emotions, the biography and the artistry of the great French chansonière to bring her songs to life. Maybe her own dramatic biography has made Patricia Kaas the ideal interpreter of the legendary Piaf repertoire. She succeeds by giving it her own personal note without tampering with the original authenticity of the chanson, which takes melancholy, irony and disillusion and combines it with an element of pride. Patricia Kaas has managed to create a bridge to the current pensive, intense acoustic sounds of the Seine metropolis, carried out into the world by trendy protagonists like Woodkid.