A meeting of two experienced musicians coming from different musical traditions (Japan and Turkey) that find a common space in which to share their melodies and sounds, like two poets meeting for the first time, evoking aromas of spices, incense and orange blossom with their instruments and their skill, conjuring up landscapes of the Far and Middle East in an unusual combination of rare beauty. Rodrigo Rodríguez, with the subtlety of his Shakuhachi flute and Ignacio Béjar, with the power of his Ney and Oud, among other instruments, come on stage together in this unique musical offering which unites two apparently different worlds, creating a musical event that comes from the heart. Rodrigo Rodríguez: Shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute)
IGNACIO BÉJAR: Ney, oud, Turkish clarinet, rebab, shruty box, voice
Ignacio Béjar is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, music therapist and promoter of the healing aspect of Sufi music. He has performed numerous concerts both as a soloist and as a member of emblematic groups of World Music at both a national and international level (TUMATA, CARAVASAR, EL SOMBRERO DEL ALQUIMISTA, RIFAK, KHAIRKAN, among others) with musicians of various cultures, and has played in festivals and theatres in Spain, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal and England. He has also participated as a musician in numerous SEMA (whirling dervish) ceremonies. In the traditional manner he has studied the ney, Turkish sufi music of Central Asia as well as Oriental Music Therapy with Dr Oruç Guvenç from Istanbul.
His motivation has always been the search for a universal language through music and improvisation, in order to recover the ritual and healing significance of this art. He conducts many workshops on Sufi Healing Music (Oriental Music Therapy), an ancestral technique used as a form of medicine in the ancient hospitals of Al-Andalus and the Middle East. He has published two solo CDs: “Epikeya, la historia de un sueño” (“Epikeya: the Story of a Dream”; 2000) and “Hacia la Luz” (“Towards the Light”; 2013), as well as other albums with different groups. “Alminares mediterráneos” (“Mediterranean Minarets”) with CARAVASAR (2006), El sombrero del alquimista (The Alchemist's Hat; 2009)...
RODRIGO RODRIGUEZ is a Hispanic-Argentinian composer, master and player of the shakuhachi flute. He is also a musicologist and disseminator specialising in various musical styles of shakuhachi. Rodrigo has lived and studied shakuhachi in Tokyo under the tutelage of master Kakizakai Kaoru in The International Shakuhachi Kenshunkan School and with Kohachiro Miyata, one of the maximum proponents of the shakuhachi in Japan. Rodrigo has performed on stage at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo, at events of the NHK and at the Kōtoku-in temple of the Great Buddha in the city of Kamakura. In 2011 and 2012 Rodrigo received an invitation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to play at the prominent Conservatory of Moscow (the Tchaikovsky Conservatory). In 2013 he published The Road of Hasekura Tsunenaga, a CD of traditional shakuhachi dedicated to the first Japanes embassador to Spain, Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga.
www.rodrigo-rodriguez.info