Coimbra: Where drummers hang out...
As a composer I hold percussion very close to my heart because it is probably humanity's true lingua franca. From June 16th to the 28th Portugal's most outstanding percussionists and percussion groups -classical, jazz, popular- met in Coimbra for a celebration of Percussion Music in Portuguese. Groups and soloists from both Portugal and the African Portuguese speaking countries participated.
The list included the ever popular Gaiteiros de Lisboa, the remarkable and leading Portuguese player Pedro Carneiro, the African percussion sounds and rhythms of Djamboonda and percussionist Quiné's electric prercussion solos with samplers and sequencers.
During the first week we produced a very unique and quite remakable event: the Adufeiras de Monsanto, players of the traditional percussion frame drum called adufe shared the stage with the Netas di Bibinha Cabral playing the traditional batuque from Cape Verde and the Tucanas, a group of young women percussionists from Lisbon. The moment was pure magic! A "congress" on interculturalism, live and with/through music!! Thank you Adufeiras, Netas and Tucanas for making this possible!
The festival also included the celebrated group Tim-Tim-Por-Tim-Tum in two highly energetic and unforgetable concerts and the outstanding group Drumming -six master percussionists led by an imperial Miquel Bernat- an example of hard work, fantastic talent and musicianship.
We closed this festival with the unique repertoire and breathtaking act of WOC/‘o Ó que som tem? .
The magic and the power of percussion.
