Windcraft Music Fest 4

This year’s Windcraft Music Fest will be more “airy” than ever, with bands combining different music traditions of the world and the winds giving the lead to a lively musical celebration.

It’s the fourth time that the Windcraft Music Fest (Youth Award 2016, Category Culture) returns to the picturesque village of Katydata for a musical weekend of concerts, workshops, screenings and parallel activities. The winds will be starring also in this year’s line-up, which will feature local and international artists and bands showcasing their original music projects, which are influenced by music traditions of the world. The festival will take us from European jazz and classical music to the brass sound of the Balkans and the melodies of the Mediterranean, and from the uplifting afro-brazilian rhythms to the gypsy paths of jazz manouche, to confirm that different cultures can indeed co-exist.

“Toubanaki & The Buzz Bastardz” – one of the most remarkable projects of the Greek world jazz scene – will mix traditional music with contemporary music forms in a delirious melodic explosion of Balkan sounds. A trip to the Balkans is what the Windcraft Band also promises for this year’s performance, sharing the stage with the great Italian saxophonist Federico Pascucci (Errichetta Underground, Tugoslavik Orkestar). The festival will be hosting another classy new collaboration - that of the Takoushis-Karapatakis Project (Marios Takoushis, Gabriel Karapatakis, Zacharias Spyridakis) with the Greek trumpet player Andreas Polyzogopoulos, which will perform original ideas and compositions based on the principles of jazz and improvisation and infused with the Mediterranean culture. The newly formed latin jazz group Macumba – a collaboration of Chilean bassist Rodrigo Cacerés with Elias Ioannou, George Morfitis and Rodos Panayiotou – will lift up the mood with their own interpretation of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music, while The Hot Club of Cyprus, consisting of musicians from both communities of the island, will take us back to the 1930s, reviving the gypsy sounds of jazz manouche. Two exceptional young musicians will also present their solo projects: one of them is Giannis Koutis (ud, classical fretless guitar, voice, cümbüş, duduk), who deliberately moves among the East Mediterranean music traditions, and the other one is Vasilis Vasiliou, who combines the enchanting melodic qualities of the handpan with the grooves of multi-percussion. Moreover, the line-up includes a classical woodwind quintet, the Quintus Ensemble, which will perform well-known compositions of Manos Hatzidakis and Vasilis Tsitsanis in original arrangements.

Workshops, lectures and parallel activities that involve everyone in the process of music creation will be offered for free to visitors of any age. Distinguished musicians and instructors, such as Dimitris Baslam (“Agisilagos”, “Gargalistis”), Aggeliki Toubanaki, Pantelis Stoikos and Stefanos Ioannides will present activities that combine learning with fun. For the first time, the festival will also include documentary screenings on Cypriot music tradition: “The Cypriot Fiddler” by Dr. Nicoletta Demetriou and the bi-communal production “Karsilamas” by the Cypriot Intangible Cultural Heritage Project. The screenings will be followed by Cypriot traditional music performances.

The Youth Board of Cyprus, celebrating 30 years of Erasmus+, invites young people to participate in an unusual treasure hunt, where the goal is to discover an “awkward band” and the award is the experience of music creation and collectivity.

Windcraft Music Fest is organised by the non-profit cultural association Windcraft Loud, which received the Youth Award 2016 in the Category Culture (Youth Board of Cyprus & Cooperative Central Bank) as a sign of appreciation for its significant cultural work which promotes local tradition filtered through a contemporary perspective. Blending harmonically the past with the present, creating a common space for cultural understanding and interaction and encouraging the audience to participate in the exciting process of music creation, is what the festival aims for.

Information
Τηλ. 22-377748, www.windcraftmusicfest.com, [email protected]

Organiser: Windcraft Loud
Sponsors: Cultural Services of Ministry of Education & Culture, Youth Board of Cyprus
Media sponsor: Politis Newspaper
Supporters: Ano Sound, Interton, Ioannides Acoustics, Windcraft Music Centre, Κatydata Community Council