THE VIEW FROM FEZ: Keyvan Chemirani back at the Fes Festival

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Keyvan Chemirani back at the Fes Festival

At the Fes Festival in 2006, Keyvan Chemirani presented his work The Rhythm of Speech, gathering together a group of musicians from a wide variety of musical horizons. At this year's festival, he continued with his focus on rhythmic connections between disparate languages and musical styles.

Keyvan Chemirani on percussion

Melos - Sounds of the Mediterranean featured musicians from Greece, France, Morocco and Spain, celebrating the Mediterrean shores as a place of meeting and fusion.

Giorgios Xylouris from Crete played a superb lute piece with Stellios Petrakis on lyra that stunned the audience.

Giorgios Xylouris

He also sang with well-known Moroccan singer Samira Kadiri, who was ably accompanied by Mohamed Mrochdi Mfarredj on qanoun, Nabil Akbib on violin and Mostafa Ahkam on ney.

Samira Kadiri

Esperanza Fernandez

In turn, Samira sang with Esperanza Fernandez whose great Flamenco expertise has been seen at the Festival before. It was hard for Esperanza to keep to her seat - she seemed desperate to get up and dance to her music. Esperanza was accompanied by Salvador Gutierrez on guitar and Jorge Perez on percussion. All the musicians were superb and although they had only rehearsed together for a few days, their timing was impressive.

Samira Kadiri and Esperanza Fernandez

It was a pretty cold and windy evening, but the smallish audience was rewarded by a fascinating fusion of music from around the Mediterranean - altogether a satisfying concert. Enjoying the event were ...