Juan Carmona & Erdal Erzincan

Juan Carmona:

His name is Carmona, like his distant cousins of the Habichuelas dynasty of Granada, all guitarists. In 1963, one year after the exile, he was born in Lyon, France.

He's one of the most creative guitarist of his generation. His style, which follows the flamenco tradition and enrichs it with subtle innovations, made him possible to let recognize the originality of his art and to work with the greatest flamenco masters.

Noticed at early age by professionals he begun rich and eclectic musical carreer and felt soon a need to be closer to the earth of his ancestors, in order to find inspiration at its origins and to prove his talent there. So he moved to Andalusia and started to leave in Jerez de la Frontera, a city which is considered as the birthplace of the flamenco art. He used to work over eight years there with the most famous flamenco artists: the singers Agujetas, Duquende, Terremoto Hijo, Capuyo de Jerez, Rubichi, Antonio y Manuel Malenas, Jesus Monje, José Mendez, and the dancers Joaquin Grilo, Maria del Mar Moreno, Ana Parilla, Angelita y Joselito Vargas, Joselito Fernandez... At this time, he made recordings with Chano Dominguez, Rubem Dantas, Manolito Soler, Tino di Geraldo...

He also begun to gather prestigious prices, like, for example, the Great International Price of Jerez de la Frontera (1988), the Villa Medicis Price ‘Hors les Murs’ (1990), the Lavoisier Price (1992), or the Madrid Contest of Paco de Lucia (1994)...

After having won a definitive recognition in Spain and especially in Andalusia, Juan Carmona enlarged his musical universe by opening his art to new influences. He started to collaborate with musicians coming from very different cultures: the jazz musicians Mino Cinelu, Birili Lagren, Larry Corriel, Babik Rheinhart, Philip Catherin, Christian Escoudé or Raphael Fays, the Indian violonist Subramanian, the ouzbek singer Matlubeh, the moroccan ‘oud player Saïd Chraïbi... He also participated to the elaboration of several film musics (La belle Histoire, Cuisines et Dépendances, Sables Mouvants).

He’s now traveling all over France and the five continents in company with his own ensemble, the Juan Carmona Grupo, which performs at a lot of internationally famous venues and festivals.

One of his recent composition, Sinfonia Flamenca has been nominated for the Latin Grammy Awards 2006, and has been interpreted by several orchestras: Russian Philarmony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre de Tunis, Brandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Danubian Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de l’Opera de Marseille...

http://www.juancarmona.com
http://www.nomadeskultur.com

Erdal Erzincan:

Erdal Erzincan is considered as one of the greatest baglama virtuoso of his generation and as the most talentuous actual ambassador of the Anatolian musical tradition. He has always been conscious of the multiple facets of his instrument, and has always wanted to reveal them. Though he looks for new horizons, he demonstrates a total fidelity to the tradition of the ashik minstrels, for whom the baglama is the instrument par excellence.

Born in 1971 in Erzurum, he discovered his passion for the traditional music of the different Turkish regions very early. He moved to Istanbul in 1985 to study with Arif Sag, the indisputable legend of the Turkish baglama. At this time, several young soloists who got together as student of the great master have been taking on one hand their inspiration at the roots of the alevi and bekashi rituals (mystical poems - deyish, dances - sema) and one the other hand they have been diversificating their repertoire. Virtuosi, eclectic, but ever conscious of the spiritual dimension of their art, they have been recognized over the limits of their own community very quickly.

Erdal Erzincan is going on on this way and continuing to enrich his style with the finest improvement. He is exploring, rediscovering, and also surprising...

At the end of the 80s, he graduated from Istanbul University and made researches on the fingering in order to create a new approach of baglama and to better one of the finest playing techniques, the shelpe. Associating ancestral traditions and innovation, his experiences open new prosodic and acoustic possibilities to the instrument, as soloist as well as in a group.

His first album, Töre, was issued in 1994. It has been the first step for a long series of succesful discs, which opened him the international scene. He also recorded numerous albums with other Turkish soloists and ensembles: Tolga Sag, İsmail Özden, Yilmaz Celik, Muharrem Temiz, or the Istanbul State Symphonic Orchestra. In 1996 he collaborated with Arif Sag for a project with the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra, and he renewed this kind of experience with the Vienna Ambassade Symphonic Ensemble in 2004. Recently, he recorded Wind, an album in duo with the Iranian kamancha virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. They performed together on several stages