Three days of all that’s music
View(s):The Musicmatters Festival is on for the fifth consecutive year this August. Organised by a collective of musicians and faculty, affiliated to the performance based music school–Musicmatters, the festival’s vision is to nurture alternative platforms where non-mainstream musicians can present, create and collaborate.
The programme is as follows:
Friday August 12, Goethe Institut Hall, 8 p.m.
The featured artist for the opening experimental music evening is German double bass virtuoso and composer Sebastian Gramss. Gramss has been an active international performer in the field of contemporary and improvised music since 1988 and has released more than 20 albums under his name.
Tickets: Rs 500
Saturday August 13, Barefoot Garden Café, 7 p.m.
Day 2 of the festival features several local and international groups performing original jazz influenced music from India, Europe and Sri Lanka.
Tarun Balani is a drummer, composer, percussionist and music educator living in New Delhi, India. In 2012, Tarun released his debut record Sacred World. Bernhard Geigl, a German pianist, performs with Sumudi Suraweera and Isaac Smith who marks the end of his stay in Colombo where he has been residing for several months as an artist in residence at Musicmatters.
Adding a Sri Lankan element to the evening of jazzy contemporary music, the Serendib Sorcerers and the Musicmatters Transcoastal Collective will present a special combined performance featuring folk music from the Western and Eastern parts of the island, reworked to a contemporary musical setting featuring Berlin based recorder and violin player Miako Klein.
Musicmatters Collective’s electronic groove based group Kinesthetics will close off Day 2 of the festival with a party featuring Komorebi from New Delhi collaborating with the group as their lead singer. Kinesthetics will include the regular collective members Sarani Perera, Isuru Kumarasinghe, Uvindu Perera and other upcoming musicians.
Sunday August 14, CH & FC, 4 p.m.
The final show of the festival features some of the festival’s most prominent acts in a relaxed afternoon setting adjoining the CH&FC clubhouse on Maitland crescent.
DACH-a European jazz quartet consisting of David Six (piano) Mathias Ruppnig (drums), Andrii Prozorov (saxophone) and Ilya Alabuzhev(bass) from Austria and Ukraine will perform for the first time in the Indian subcontinent.
The latest trio format of the Musicmatters group Baliphonics with Susantha Rupathilaka, Isaac Smith and Sumudi Suraweera allows deeper interaction among the three performers and is starting to separate this project as an entity of its own, from the original Sri Lankan low country Bali ritual, which the group draws upon so heavily.
Another highlight for this year is a performance by three Kiwi musicians living across the globe (Misha Marks – Mexico, Reuben Derrick – New Zealand, Isaac Smith – Sri Lanka) along with a Sri Lankan with close ties to New Zealand (Sumudi Suraweera).
The festival will end with the entire Musicmatters Collective coming together to perform a collection of simple, joyful party tunes from the mountains of Oaxaca!
Tickets: Rs 2000
A festival pass, allowing access to all three events of the Musicmatters Festival 2016 can be purchased for Rs 3000.