Poems of Břetislav Ditrych set to chamber music
Jiří Durman - wind instruments
Růžena Hejná - vocal
Alexandr Krestovský - guitar, percussion, declamation, vocal
The Opposite Land trio was founded in 1996 by Jiří Durman and Alexandr Krestovsky as a duo, where different musical experiences were melded together in an unbounded musical expression loosely based on an East European musical tradition, with considerable emphasis on improvisation. After common musical starts in the first half of the 70s influenced mainly by the jazz avantgarde, Jiří Durman was fully involved in free improvised music, while Alexandr Krestovský switched later to early music and since the 80s has been singing medieval and rennaissance vocal polyphonic music.
Their first public appearance was in 1996 at the Jazz festival in Karlovy Vary. Since 1998, the Durman - Krestovsky duo has been working with different poetic texts from the Central and East European cultural region in their original languages (Jan Skácel, Ivan Blatný, František Listopad, Osip Mandelštam, N.Gumilyov, Danilo Kiš, B.Hamvás, A.Kusniewicz, A.Miran, Romanian folk ballads, and others) and improvised parts of the music -- composed mainly by J.Durman -- conforms more to the structure and poetics of the text.
UP NORTH
Ganesh Anandan: multi-percussion, invented instruments
Rainer Wiens: prepared guitar, kalimbas
Rainer Wiens and Ganesh Anandan met in Montreal in1996, where they played together on many occasions before forming the duo Up North in 2003. Their music is an organic spontaneous music and belongs to the Tradition of the Moment. They create a unique sonic world based on listening, dialog, intuition, personal techniques, composition and Improvisation. In 2006 Up North recorded a cd that was independently released. Since then the duo has worked in Canada, Holland and the Czech Republic. They are also actively involved with choreographers and dancers.
