Marktkonzert: Alafia Ensemble

In the organizer's words:

Every Saturday at 12 noon on the Open Space stage: the popular market concerts! This Saturday, the Alafia Ensemble will be playing.

The ensemble consists of the Venezuelan flautist Leonardo Pedroza, the Scottish mandolin player Iain Lennon, the Russian pianist/composer Olga Riazantceva-Schwarz, the German-Palestinian violist Marina Eichberg, the Chilean-Basque cellist Paula Sagastibelza and the Cypriot clarinettist Nikola Janjic. The six musicians who founded the ensemble in 2020 are united by their passion for chamber music as well as new visions and ideas.

The chamber music training of the ensemble members from baroque to contemporary music was influenced by professors such as the Casals Quartet, Florence Millet, Dirk Peppel, Susanne Müller-Hornbach and Anthony Spiri. Since its foundation, the ensemble has been working with professors Anthony Spiri, Michael Schwarz and Mike Marshall on its repertoire, which includes arrangements of orchestral works for this particular instrumentation and contemporary pieces with traditional origins from the cultures of the individual members. In 2020 and 2021, the ensemble received various scholarships, including the "NRW Künstlerstipendium Neustart Kultur", the "Musiker Zukunft" scholarship from the German Orchestra Foundation and the "Iportunus Mobility" scholarship. The latter enabled the collaboration with the Portuguese composer Vasco Negreiros, who dedicated a piece to the ensemble with its unusual instrumentation, which celebrated its world premiere in Portugal. The ensemble also won first prize in the "Valencia Awards" music competition in the chamber music category.

Since 2021, the Alafia Ensemble has taken part in various festivals and given concerts in various venues across much of Europe - for example at the BMG Festival in Scotland, the Barmer Kultursommer in Wuppertal, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and numerous other venues in Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands.

The program:

Chris Aquavella (*1975)
Yutuma

Chris Aquavella (*1975)
2014

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Scherzo**

Héctor Molina (*1980)
Amalgamados**

Héctor Molina (*1980)
Suite Latinoamericana**