#Ientu remix by @populousmusic is out now!!! https://backl.ink/1912549
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#canzoniere #remix #populous #canzonieregrecanicosalentino #cgsfamily @ponderosa_music_art
Category: Canzoniere
Blow Up: canzoniere review
Giovanni Vacca su Blow Up di dicembre firma una recensione bellissima, approfondita e ricca di suggestioni. Attenta alla musica e ai testi, mette in relazione il nostro #canzoniere con il nostro background storico e culturale. Da leggere assolutamente!
<<#Canzoniere è un perfetto esempio della riuscita di questo delicato equilibrio che, con locuzione ormai logora, si è soliti dire “fra tradizione e modernità”. […] I dodici brani integrano così, brillantemente, un tessuto musicale curatissimo nei suoni e negli intrecci strumentali con parole attentamente pensate, piene di riferimenti all’immaginario collettivo del sud contandino e rigorosamente nell’idioma locale con tutti i suoi arcaismi. […]
Un disco ricco e pieno di suggestioni, insomma, certamente in grado di rappresentare, in maniera intelligente, un rapporto non nostalgico ma creativo e fecondo con le proprie radici”.
Rhythm Passport interviews Mauro Durante
Rhythm Passport interviews our Mauro Durante regarding our new album #canzoniere and our show of next Friday Dec 15th at the Rich Mix London. With a brand new surprise: our friend and great folk singer Sam Lee will join us for a couple songs!!!
Interview: Mauro Durante, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino – Harvesting ‘Crops of Songs’ Between Salento and the World (November 2017)
Our interview started from the most recent addition to the band’s discography:
“Canzoniere is our latest collection of songs. We called it that because we really consider it as a rural and agricultural metaphor. We sowed the seeds for the songs in the album between Lecce and New York – where I spent more than four months going back and forth. In New York, I did some co-writing sessions with some great musicians and producers and worked with different artists like Coldplay,Bruno Mars and Celine Dion. I had various meaningful experiences, and, from there, those seeds that we planted have started to grow. We let them sprout and ripen in Lecce, working with the other musicians involved in Canzoniere and, today, those songs have matured. We harvested them and collected a robust songbook, but instead of ‘songbook’ we prefer to call it a ‘crop of songs’”.
When it comes to explaining the subject of the album and its themes, Mauro’s answer is unexpected as much as it is romantic and inspired.
“Canzoniere speaks about hands, our hands. About how much we need our hands to touch and get in touch with each other: create a relationship, hug, make love, to protect what we really care about, stand up to, and fight. Hands are what shape our lives. Broadly speaking, Canzoniere is a social album, different from Quaranta, which was predominantly a political work”.
As Mauro revealed, Canzoniere had enough time to take root and then spring its leaves and express the recent developments in the band’s music path.
“The project started during the summer of 2015. Ludovico Einaudi, with whom I collaborate, was embarking on a new tour and asked every member of his group to not miss a show, and become involved with the project on a full-time basis. Unfortunately, as CGS plays such an important role in my life, I couldn’t join him, so I started to look for new experiences. That’s when I decided to go to New York, because, in New York, there is both our North American manager and publisher (Mark Gartenbergand Eric Beall).
They had the idea of organising some co-writing sessions for me with a few musicians based there. In that way, I could combine and compare my compositions and CGS’s style with a more canonical and structured songwriting method, including more established elements like the refrain; a more concise length for our songs (in that way, they could be easily played by commercial radios) and those characteristics that are not usually taken into consideration with traditional music, where you commonly repeat melodies, strophes and instrumental parts. I found that time very constructive, because everything simply started like an experience with no pretensions to release or even record anything new. I just planned to go to New York and have a different music adventure, but after the first month I spent there, when I went back to Lecce I asked my music partners in CGS to listen to those embryos of songs that I had recorded. When I noticed that their reaction was enthusiastic, from those rough sketches they were willing to create something new for the band, so I seized the moment and started to go back and forth until the summer of 2016.”
That was when we finally gathered enough new material among the things I had written during those sessions: some songs that I wrote all by myself and some more collective works which could produce a full-length album. All the material followed me back and forth between Salento and New York and, inevitably, modified itself by changing shape. Finally, in December 2016, one of the producers I met in New York, Joe Mardin (who’s the son of Arif Mardin – the legend behind many works of Aretha Franklin, The Bee Gees and Norah Jones), came to Salento and helped us to finalise all the recordings in two or three weeks. He brought everything home and mixed the album, which was latterly mastered by Joe LaPorta – another exceptional sound engineer who recently won a Grammy for David Bowie’s Black Star”.
All of these experiences and encounters, which occurred over the last two years, have inevitably remodelled CGS’s sound. However, the ensemble hasn’t denaturalised their approach to music, always staying true to their roots.
“I have to say that the most significant thing in our music is that the main ingredients are always the same. As a matter of fact, we haven’t changed our instruments: we still play the violin, bouzuki, accordion, frame drum, recorders and Moog bass guitar (which we already used in Quaranta). In addition, there are even more drum parts than in our previous works, and we also overlapped some frame drum sections. However, even if the ingredients are the same – despite the incursion of Justin Adams and his electric guitar, plus the acoustic guitar of Piers Faccini, or even the piano of one of our American producers – I feel that the sound is different. The production, arrangements and mixing made the final outcome different. I’d say that it’s fresher, more powerful and closer to other international productions”.
It’s not only CGS that are looking for and earning some recognition on the international music scene. It looks like more and more Apulian musicians (and Salentinian in particular) are opening up to the world.
“The Apulian music scene is really lively at the moment. If you consider the world music panorama, the Apulian one is still pretty young, almost a newcomer. For this reason, there’s so much desire to make our music known abroad and to spread it everywhere. Artists like Antonio Castrignanò and Kalàscima,or the Notte della Taranta itself and its orchestra (which is directed by Daniele Durante, my father, at the moment) are all part of a solid reality able to make its voice heard internationally”.
On Friday night, Canzoniere’s world tour will bring the Apulian sound to London for a very Christmassy event. We asked Mauro how they succeeded in transposing the studio recordings on stage and what will happen at Rich Mix.
“We recorded the album in a studio, apart from two songs (“Pizzica De Sira”, and “Aiora”), which were both recorded live; we played the tracks entirely by ourselves. I mean, there’s no electronica or special effects in it. So, once on stage, we will propose the songs almost in the same way as we recorded them. The idea is to have an even more pronounced trajectory: we’d like to let the audience have an immersive experience, and for this reason, the set list will draw from our past and present repertoire.”
Then, to bring our music abroad is always emotional, because, as if by magic, the language, cultural and time barriers fall down and people feel embraced and engaged by it. In a matter of seconds, it all becomes an explosion of energy and rhythms.”
I also believe that there are many elements that bring our music closer to the British taste. I’m talking about the dance fuelled by the sound of the fiddle and drums. So, I reckon that what people need to do is simply join us and everything will work out just fine. Anyway, to make it even more alluring for the London audience, I have some good news for you because Sam Lee will join us on stage during our Rich Mix show”.
Aitäh Estonia!
5 days, 4 shows, tons of memories. Aitäh Estonia! See you soon 🙂
Pics by M. Morabito, G. Bianco, A. Kozulin, F. Aiello
RAI television News tells about our magic show in Rome
RAI television News tells about our magic show in Rome a few days ago, and about our European tour.
CORRIERE DELLA SERA TV: CGS tradition and contemporary sound
All’Auditorium Parco della Musica, il concerto del Canzoniere grecanico salentino. Il «Guardian» li ha definiti «una bomba», il Times ha recensito in maniera entusiastica il loro ultimo album
– Giuseppe Cucinotta e Sabina D’Oro /Corriere TV
Quella di Roma è una delle tappe del tour europeo del Canzoniere che è partito da Lecce e ha toccato già Berlino e Parigi. Nei prossimi giorni il gruppo si sposterà in Estonia per quattro concerti, per poi tornare in Italia a Milano il 10 dicembre e chiudere questa prima parte del tour a Londra il 15 dicembre. L’album è stato registrato fra Lecce e New York e fonde in maniera innovativa gli strumenti della tradizione salentina a un sound contemporaneo. L’ingegnere del suono per il mastering è Joe LaPorta, vincitore di un Grammy per “Black star” di David Bowie.
Rai Radio1: interview to Mauro Durante @STEREONOTTE
Mauro Durante talks with Max De Tomassi about the album genesis #canzoniere
the magic stage of theCentro Culturale Candiani @Mestre
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Rai News: Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, the Italian tour
Concerti a Firenze, Roma e Mestre
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino in tour in Italia
Il gruppo di world music presenta il nuovo album Canzoniere, esaltato dalla stampa internazionale. Tre tappe italiane prima di nuovi appuntamenti a Londra, Bruxelles e in Estonia
di Nicola Iannello 30 novembre 2017 Dopo Berlino e Parigi, il Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino – tra i più importanti e riconosciuti gruppi di world music – prosegue il suo tour e atterra in Italia per alcune tappe prima di ridecollare verso altri lidi. Primo concerto nella Penisola a Firenze venerdì 1 dicembre all’auditorium Flog, poi sabato 2 a Mestre al Centro Candiani e domenica 3 all’Auditorium Parco della Musica di Roma. In vetrina il nuovo album Canzoniere. Il nuovo disco, il più cosmopolita, arriva a quarantadue anni di distanza dalla fondazione del gruppo e a due dall’ultimo album Quaranta. Innovativo e ambizioso, Canzoniere è stato acclamato dalla stampa internazionale. “Una vera e propria bomba” per il Guardian; mentre il Times lo ha definito “incredibilmente accattivante. Pieno di caratteri e colori”. L’album, registrato tra Lecce e New York, fonde in modo originale stili e influenze in cui gli strumenti della tradizione salentina si prestano a un sound più moderno e contemporaneo. Ricco di prestigiose collaborazioni internazionali, ospita la chitarra inglese di Justin Adams, storico collaboratore di Robert Plant; l’inconfondibile voce del cantautore anglo-francese Piers Faccini; e il prezioso tocco classico del violoncello di Marco Decimo. Sul palco con Mauro Durante (voce, percussioni, violino), ci sono Alessia Tondo (voce e castagnette); Emanuele Licci (voce, chitarra e bouzouki; Giulio Bianco (zampogna, basso, armonica, flauti e fiati popolari; Massimiliano Morabito (organetto); Giancarlo Paglialunga (voce e tamburello) e Silvia Perrone (danza). Dopo le date italiane, il tour proseguirà in Estonia (a Tallin il 5 dicembre, a Pärnu il 6, Jõhvi il 7 e Tartu l’8). Dal 9 dicembre si riparte da Bruxelles, il 10 a Milano per arrivare il 15 a Londra.
Top 5 – World and Europe Charts! thank you!
Climbing the Top 5!!
Our #canzoniere keeps climbing the World Music Charts!! 4th place in theTransglobal World Music Chart and 5th in the World Music Charts Europe!!
Those charts are made monthly by some of the most influential world music critics!
Thank you so much!