2024-03-21 20:15:21
Erwan Keravec will start the series of accompanying concerts of the Prague music festival Respect on May 13 at the Akropolis Palace with the project 8 Pipers for Philip Glass. The versatile Scottish bagpipe player will present the early compositions of living classic Philip Glass from 1969, performed by an eight-piece ensemble of Scottish and Breton bagpipes and bombards, pipes related to the shalmai.
The second performer of the opening night will be the Finnish pianist Aki Rissanen. A former participant in the solo piano competitions at Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival will present a composition for a special invention called the omniwerk, in which Finnish builders combined two historic keyboard instruments – the organist’s viola, or geigenwerk, originally by Leonardo da Vinci, and the lautenwerk, which was a baroque keyboard lute used in times Johann Sebastian Bach.
This year’s edition of the most famous Czech world music festival Respect will be dedicated to former foreign minister and presidential candidate Karl Schwarzenberg. He was at the birth of the event at Prague Castle in the days when he was chancellor to Václav Havel. Schwarzenberg died last year, he was 85 years old.
Aki Rissanen will play an instrument called omniwerk. | Photo: Rachot Production
In the accompanying program of the festival, on Thursday, June 6, the band Tamikrest will again perform in the Akropolis Palace with a rock interpretation of desert blues. A morning concert for children will take place the following day at the same venue.
However, the main part will only take place on June 15 and 16 under the open sky on Prague’s Štvanice island, where the festival will return after a long-term break. Ten bands from ten countries will perform. From Israel will come Voices of Yemen, who will present ancient Jewish rituals from the Yemeni desert, produced by American bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz.
Global music pioneer Jah Wobble combines hypnotic bass riffs with dub, punk and other influences. The 65-year-old English bassist became famous as a co-creator of the band Public Image Ltd, at the birth of which he stood with John Lydon. Later he collaborated with producer Brian Eno or the krautrock band Can. He will come to Prague with his most famous line-up Invaders of the Heart, founded in 1982.
Khusugtun will come all the way from Mongolia. | Photo: Rachot Production
The Mongolian six-piece Khusugtun, which also features a female singer and player of an impressive large yat-kha zither, will perform raw throat singing with polyphony and the rhythms of galloping horses.
Africa will be represented by the Egyptian band El Tanbura made up of villagers, fishermen and Sufi mystics, as well as the Malian group Bamba Wassoulou Groove and Moroccan trance rituals gnawa performed by the Lifting Spirits quartet. It was founded by Justin Adams, the former guitarist of Robert Plant, also well known to the Czech audience.
From Baluchistan, the crossroads of cultures on the border of Pakistan and Iran, the musician Ustad Núr Bachš, until recently known only from local recordings and film documentaries, will come to Prague. A Pakistani musicologist traveled a thousand kilometers to find Bakhsh, whose address was unknown.
The traditional Estonian kannel zither will be presented to Respect’s visitors by young Estonian singers who perform under the banner of Duo Ruut. They play the zither four-handed facing each other, using mallets and bows in addition to their fingers, or they beat the body of the instrument percussively.
Duo Ruut consists of two Estonian singer-songwriters. | Photo: Rachot Production
Music from Turkish Kurdistan will be performed by Ali Dogan Gönültas, winner of the German Gramophone Critics Award, who spent ten years doing ethnographic research in his home region in the east of the country.
The program of the two-day festival will be completed by the multi-genre duo The Breath from the British Isles, consisting of singer Ríoghnach Connolly and guitarist Stuart McCullum.
On September 5th, the world-famous group Tinariwen from Mali, Africa, will once again put an imaginary full stop on this year’s edition at the Akropolis Palace.
The show of ethnic music began in the 90s of the last century at Prague Castle during the era of Václav Havel. In recent years, Respect has been held on Strelecky Island, in Ladronka Park and most recently on Rohanský Island. His mission is to “acquaint the Czechs with other music and break stereotypes”, Aktuálně.cz wrote last year. In the past, the festival presented, for example, Taraf de Haidouks, Guinean singer and choir player Mory Kante, Pakistani native Faiz Ali Faiz and Malian star Oumou Sangaré.