João Almeida, Rodrigo Pinheiro & Vasco Furtado Linae

Joaquín Rodrigo is best known for his Concierto de Aranjuez, but the fame of this great work has hidden a prolific and courageous artist who struggled against blindness and hardship, and whose luminous, optimistic music is captured here in rarely heard works for violin that span almost his entire life as a composer. The timelessly beautiful Adagio from the Sonata pimpante is indeed comparable to that of the Concierto de Aranjuez, and all of these pieces are captivating in their intense lyricism and profound originality, from the Dos ezbozos expressing childhood memories of the Parterre Gardens in Valencia, to Rodrigo's only piece for solo violin, the Capriccio, and the vivacious and nostalgic Set cançons valencianes.

Navegar is bursting at the seams with sounds drawn from funk, jazz and disco and is delivered in the form of a wild travel journal, with Selva meeting artists like Flavia Coelho and multi-instrumentalist Bruno Patchworks (The Dynamics, David Walters) along the way, and navigating freely with them on the black Atlantic.

These young musicians from Egypt, Turkey, Portugal and Italy bridge the distance between the shores and sonic worlds of a rapidly changing region. Their first album, recorded in Paris, blends both timbres and backgrounds in a unique artistic collaboration with Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, supported by Abu Dhabi Festival. The composition process is a compromise between the written score — the notes on the stave — with an exclusively oral tradition, in which the theme is developed only by those taking part, first by listening to it and then by repeating it. Their music is influenced by the folk music of each country and by much improvisation and jazz, and uses melodies from the European classical tradition blended with rhythms and instruments of the Middle East.