BIO
In summer 2022, violinist and composer Wouter Vandenabeele travelled to the Balkans, Greece, southern Italy, Catalonia, Andalusia and Galicia in search of the melancholic soul in music. For three months, he forged links with local musicians and minority groups.
Melancholy connects people across centuries and cultures. It is contradictory: sadness accompanied by comfort or hope, pain accompanied by beauty or joy. Hiraeth oscillates between the timbres of melancholy heard especially in southern European musical cultures (saudade, flamenco blues, balkan music, ... ). A bittersweet hopeful longing for what is absent and can never be fully present.
The pizzica, Sevdah, flamenco… all have something in common: the energy and hope created by that music. The origin is hiraeth but the result is an expression of joie de vivre, energy and dance.
Composers
Book Agenda
