Tambour Quartet

Tambour Quartet is the exciting gathering, of four exceptional musicians bounded by a true complicity and a common passion: the tambourine. Brazilian pandeiro , oriental riqq , indian kanjira or italian tamburello , this little framed drum cross all cultures, continents and traditions. Carlo Rizzo, Paul Mindy, Ravi Prasad and Adel Shams el Din are taking us in this rhythmic journey, incredibly virtuosis and rejoicing.

Tambour Quartet is written like a musical journey inside the large repertoire of these instruments which have always accompanied the sacred and profane rituals, danses and very often the transe situations.

Those tambourine issued from four continents (Africa, America, Asia and Europ) are in spite of great distances between them, of similar fabrication and all related to the digital percussion family. Each of these percussion is being played with their own and unique style and technic and their repertoire are linked to although ancient, still vivid traditions.

This concert’s music compositions have been written taking account of the four instruments and interprets specifities. Then in turns the compositions combine or dissociate their styles and tones forming the music conductor between modern and reinvented traditions.

The will is to elaborate a contemporary and innovative writing made from rhythmns, melodies and traditional songs, but also to bring into light for the audience the extreme modernity of these tambourins which have crossed milleniums, still remaining nowadays, models of technical complexity and of musical freshness.

Carlo Rizzo
Carlo Rizzo was born in 1955 in Venice (Italy). He studied to become a painter at the Fine Arts Academy of Rome but he abruptly switched his focus to music wich had been until then a past time. In 1979 he discovered the tambourine with Alfio Antico and Raffaele Inserra, two traditional percussionists from Southern Italy. He continued studying the tambourine on his own and little by little discovered the traditional repertories as well as ancient and modern music, covering the entire range of possibilities for hand played percussions. From musician he grew into an inventor. He designed a new instrument, a polytimbral tambourine that adapts to all types of repertories which he mastered with virtuosity and develops with his own sense of improvisation. Since 1988 he has formed a lot of musical groups in traditional, contemporary or jazz music

Adel Shams El Din
Born in Cairo in 1950 where he learns his art in a traditionnal way. He met Fathi Guened, a famous egyptian composer who initiate him to the derboukka. Today, his total mastery of even the most complex rhythmic cycles have made him a much respected performer on the riqq. (little frame drum with cymbalettes) He performed for more than 20 years with the Ensemble Al-Kindi with whom he has performed with the most beautiful voices of Middle East (Lotfi Bouchnak, Sheikh Hamza Chakour…). He is also accompanist for Fawzy Al-Ayedi in duo or other formations.

Paul Mindy
Percussionist, singer and composer, Paul Mindy, also a percussion teacher is one of the most eminent specialist of brazilian music living in France. His renowned skills and his strong personality as a percussionist leads him to play with great musicians such as : Richard Galliano, Trilok Gurtu, Ayrald Petit, Carlo Rizzo, Franck Tortillier, Dave Samuel, Baden Powell, or Nicia Ribas d’Avila, one of his inspiring master.
Today his work is more oriented to researches of existing links between musical worlds apparently different.
His carreer had been granted with many prizes and honours : 1988 – Prize Georges Brassens_ 2001 – Assemblée Nationale’s Prize_ 2002 – Charles Cros Académie’s Prize_ 2005 – ADAMI’S prize_ 2008 – Disque d’Or for the « Comptines du Baobab » (Edition Didier Jeunesse)

Ravi Prasad
His versatile talent and great artistic freedom find their roots in his childhood, growing up in a family of Radjas in Kerala (South India).
In 1985, he moves to France carrying a solid reputation as a carnatic (sacred) songs singer and is soon interested in jazz, electro-acoustic and contemporary music. A compulsive interest translating itself into collaborations with Bernard Lubat, Gérard Marais or the great flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler (several tours in Germany, Spain).
But above all Ravid Prasad is a show-man. He teams up with choreographer Régine Chopinot for 3 creations with the “ Ballet Atlantique ” (Hue Festival in Vietnam, Festival of Avignon, tours in India) and gets interested in the musical and mythical tradition of his homeland with “Malbar Experience” (collaboration with musicians from the Reunion island) and with “Ponguël”, a musical in which he is first of all an actor along with Céline Arnaud. The retreat he took from his own culture allows him to dissociate himself from a millennial tradition in the first “Indian Polyphonies” ever composed, as well as the Indian symphony “Mythia” created in 1996 at the