Coast music lovers will get the chance to hear Celso Machado and Jou Tou, a world-renowned percussionist together on stage and help out the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse in the process.
This fundraising concert event is set for Saturday, Jan. 21 at 8 p.m.
Virtuoso Brazilian guitarist, percussionist, and composer Machado, has been performing internationally for well over 30 years. Brazilian music has arisen out of various blends of classical European, African, Portuguese, and Indigenous influences. While his music is rooted in Brazilian rhythmic and melodic styles, it also reflects his incurable fascination with other world music traditions. He incorporates these influences into his own sound; his own unique contribution to the ongoing evolution of Brazilian music.
In this concert he wishes to celebrate many years of great friendship and musical collaboration with Qiu Xia He, Andre Thibault, and Liam MacDonald.
He met Chinese pipa (lute) player Qiu Xia He in 1989 on stage at the Vancouver International Folk Festival. Since their first meeting, where they used gesture to initiate a musical conversation, they have been building on each other's compositions, the traditional music of their homelands, and improvising new territory. They have recorded on each others Juno nominated CDs and have toured as a duo internationally.
Qiu Xia is a virtuoso on her instrument and an amazing composer; she can play any musical style and has adapted many of Machado's compositions for pipa and guitar.
She is the leader of the band Silk Road and collaborates with her husband, flamenco guitar and oud player Andre Thibault, in the group Jou Tou. Thibault and Machado have performed and recorded together many times over the years.
Drummer and percussionist Liam MacDonald regularly plays with Machado and with Jou Tou, and many other diverse groups. About 10 years ago MacDonald fell in love with Brazilian music and has dedicated his life ever since to becoming an expert Brazilian pandeiro player (tambourine), regularly going down to Brazil to study with the best. He has developed an amazing technique that is not to be missed.
Tickets are available for $20 from Laedeli in Sunnycrest Mall in Gibsons.
-Submitted
