The trio Matthias Well, Maria Well and Vladislav Cojocaru joins a special tradition with this album: Hungarian folk music.
Already in their early childhood, the siblings Matthias and Maria Well came into contact with this musical genre through their maternal grandfather. The grandfather, who came from the Hungarian town of Balas-sagyarmat, grew up above a lively coffee house where musicians stopped in every day and played typical Magyar folk melodies with their instruments. As a young boy, he was handed a violin one evening with the words “Hegedüljed” (‘Play!’). This event awakened his love for Hungarian music, which was passed down through generations.
But decades earlier, Hungarian folk music had already conquered the world’s great stages: between 1869 and 1880, Johannes Brahms published his 21 Hungarian Dances. Influenced early on by his former touring partner, the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi, he appropriated motifs and passages to adapt them in his own style and create new melodies.
Listen to the music: https://glmmusic.de/ZingarissimoWE
More informations: https://www.glm.de/en/product/matthias-well-maria-well-vladislav-cojocaru-zingarissimo/
The internationally acclaimed Berlin-based ethno-jazz band LELÉKA, dedicated to reviving ancient Ukrainian folk songs since its inception in 2016, presents its new album RIZDVO at the end of November. Together with the famous Ukrainian flutist Maksym Berezhniuk, virtuoso and collector of traditional woodwind instruments, the ensemble creates an extraordinary hom-mage to the incredibly rich tradition of Ukrainian Christmas music, breathing new life into it with contemporary arrangements, interpretations and improvisations.
“Times of Joy”, these are for Johannes Tonio Kreusch for many years his experiences as a guitarist and musician: the encounter. The conversation about and through the music. So the title “Times of Joy” of his new album is understood correctly: it is a collection of the most beautiful of these encounters, almost a quintessence of his musical work to date. Captured preferably in duets with outstanding figures who accompanied him part of the way.
With the CDs “Dialogues” and “Tangos & Canciones,” guitarist Johannes Tonio Kreusch and violinist Doris Orsan revived the rarely heard duo of violin and guitar. While the spectrum there ranged from classical romanticism to the Caribbean musical cosmos to modern music, they initially concentrate on Argentinian sound worlds in their new throw “Libertango”. For a good reason: the album not only celebrates their pas-sion for this music, it is based above all on the many friendships they have cultivated with musicians from this field.
It’s amazing that no musician comes to mind right away who has already processed this image: The balcony as a creative culmination point, as a place of encounter, of exchange with familiar as well as new people, which at the same time “excites contradictory feelings,” as singer Laura puts it: “The feeling of being at home and the feeling of being exposed to the outside world. The feeling of freedom coupled with the feeling of being in a safe place.” A powerful metaphor for the mind of a musician. And a perfect anchor for an album: “Sunset Balcony” is the name of Laura’s new work, “created in her mind on balmy evenings on a sunset balcony, alone or with loved ones, thinking about our place in the world or even just what we want to cook for dinner,” as she reports.