Saxophone / Clarinet player and composer Gerwil Kusters, came up with a project involving some musicians from Western Europe with experience in ‘old music’, and some musicians from Greece who have experience with traditional and Byzantine music. He intended the two musical styles to meet, intertwine, influence each other. Partly through improvisation and partly by way of getting musicians from each area to play an important role in music from the other side. And last but not least, through his own compositions, which offer an intelligent and sensitive mangling of any style of music he has ever been involved in.
He came over from Holland in February together with Holland Barok Society initiator and violinist Judith Steenbrink, and they met in our little studio for a week with Dimitris Kampolis on his Lyra, Panos Katsiklis on Qanun and Sofia Chatzopoulou on Qanun. It was an intense week but all participants came out with a glow about them, having had one of the best ever musical experiences. Everyone got to bring in something from their musical background and culture, and everyone was respectfully listening to whoever got to take the lead at a given moment. The kind of give and take and respect we would want to see more in our societies. After this week, some basic editing was done, and Ilias Psallidas recorded some percussion on two of the tracks. We are working to round off mixing in may. Some video was shot on two of the songs recorded.