| BREIZH BALKANIK : A gust from the East comes to Brittany |
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In light of their sixtieth anniversary, Bagad Kemper, under the direction of Jean-Louis Hénaff, has come up with "mad e Breiz" as its final production. As unconventional as could be, it displays an alliance of Breton and Eastern Europe music. This new project is the product of the collaborations of the Bagad with the singer and clarinetist Erik Marchand. For numerous years, this talented musician has easily and respectfully blended with the Breton culture. « It’s not easy to launch a bagad in such a venture, describes Erik Marchand, first, for reasons that involve the practical method required, secondly because this type of Balkan music is virtuoso music, with about 4 ornamentations around each note. It therefore requires a highly skilled bagad. That leaves but one group like Bagad Kemper working mainly on scores and that similarly to the musicians there, work by ear. It therefore required enormous compositional and transcriptional work, notably from the conductor Jean-Louis Hénaff. » - Ouest France, Monday October 5, 2009. Breizh Balkanik therefore resembles Breton melodies, but also Serbian, Macedonian and Romanian. « Jean-Louis Henaff energetically conducts the bagad, that skillfully progresses from one style of music to the other, revisiting the plin and the gwerziou where it crossbreeds oriental accents. All the sections are excellent and each piper ventures musical crossings, tempos, all very original. One admires the coherence and the very beautiful musicality by the incredibly audacious group. The flugelhorn, saxophone, bass, cello… join with other traditional instruments and present here and there very exotic melodies sounds » - Le Télégramme, October 11, 2009.
Bagad Kemper is accompanied for this event in song by Erik Marchand, by Maud Caron on cello, Gabriel Faure on violin, Gaby Kerdoncuff on the trumpet and flugelhorn, Bernard Le Dréau on the saxophones and clarinet, by Gheorghe Tudorache on the accordion and by Erwan Volant on the bass.
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