Havlovi: now we play four-handed piano

– We have been together for forty years and these years were like a lifetime. We started with two violas da gamba and later played piano and cello on the album Like a Butterfly on your Palm, then added songs on Tenderly to Light. Now we have the time to play four-handed piano – says Vojtěch Havel, a Czech composer and instrumentalist, who plays with Irena Havlová.

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Wojciech Rusin: speculative anthropologist

– An immigrant always negotiates his position in some way. There are different strategies: mixing languages, preserving traditional costumes or seeking a place through speculative anthropology. This works at the university and in a gallery, but I believe it can also provoke something outside of them – says musician and composer, Wojciech Rusin.

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Sourdure: living tradition, not a museum

– A lot of stuff is melted together but in the music of La Nòvia, Cocanha, even in my music there’s this idea of doing actually traditional music, living traditional music. I think it’s because we are a generation that wasn’t cut off from traditional culture. It’s not about making a museum, it’s about putting a lot of yourself into it – says Ernest Bergez, composer, vocalist and creator of the Sourdure, Kaumwald, Tanz Mein Herz and Orgue Agnès.

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Grzegorz Tarwid: out of piano comfort zone

– Piano doesn’t have to be a beautiful instrument with a Steinway concert hall sound, but it can be a piano that sounds like it came out of an old movie. This happens when it imitates another instrument – not a keyboard instrument, but a percussion or guitar instrument. This is how piano music can be rediscovered – says Grzegorz Tarwid, pianist and composer.

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