A piacere Music for Viola da Gamba Fahmi Alqhai

• 1Marizápalos04:26
• 2Fandango03:59
• 3Passacalle04:13
• 4Canarios03:12
• 5El canto de los pajaros - Nana para Juliette05:59
• 6Concerto No. 44 for 2 Equal Bass Viols, 'Tombeau Les Regrets': IV. Les pleurs02:43
• 7Pieces for Solo Viol: I. Allemande03:00
• 8I. Sarabande, 'Le pleureux'03:10
• 9Les Indes galantes: Les Sauvages (arr. for chamber ensemble)03:24
• 10Pieces de viole, Book 2: Les voix humaines05:29
• 11Pieces de viole, Book 3: La Guitare03:55
• 12Always with Me, Always with You03:35
• 13Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, BWV 1003: III. Andante (arr. for viola da gamba)06:43
• Total Runtime53:48

Info for A piacere Music for Viola da Gamba

In A piacere Fahmi Alqhai demonstrates once again what an expressive musician he has become, and with the viola da gamba as his “Wondrous Muse”, he recreates for CD a concert programme which he has been touring and refining over recent years. Quickly following on from his ensemble album Rediscovering Spain (performed with Accademia del Piacere) this new release from Glossa has a distinctively soloistic feel and approach to it, with Alqhai relishing the different moods and musical directions that his chosen musical “voice” permits him to take.

Considering the instrument as so much more than a relic from the decaying aristocratic age of Louis XV in France, Alqhai demonstrates – by his choice of programme in A piacere and his playing – the viol’s versatility, flexibility and depth of emotional response: music from Spanish, German and French Baroque masters of the instrument are joined by Alqhai’s own version of the Joe Satriani Always with me, always with you rock number. Notably in his Satriani adaptation (but also in an old Spanish popular melody featuring the cantaor Arcángel, as well as elsewhere) Alqhai receives support from musician friends gathered at the sessions in Sevilla, all helping to create – in marvellous sound – a new demonstration of the creative freedom that old music can allow for in the right hands.

Fahmi Alqhai, viola da gamba

Arcángel, voice
Pablo Martín Caminero, violin & double bass
Pedro Estevan, percussion
Agustín Diassera, percussion
Juan Carlos Rivera, theorbo
Rami Alqhai, viola da gamba & violotto
Johanna Rose, viola da gamba
Ignacio del Valle, viola da gamba

Engineered by Jordi Gil
Produced by Fahmi & Rami Alqhai
Executive producer: Carlos Céster

Fahmi Alqhai
Born in Seville in 1976. From a Syrian father and Palestinian mother spends her first 11 years of life in Syria where he began his musical training at an early age. Later in Spain studied by himself to join in 1994 at the Conservatorio Superior de Sevilla Manuel Castillo to study the viola da gamba with Ventura Rico. He continues his training at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis prestigious schools (Basel) and Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano) guided by teachers and Vittorio Paolo Pandolfo Ghielmi respectively. Alongside his musical studies obtained the Bachelor of Dentistry from the University of Seville.

Already in 1998 he began his solo career specializing in the German repertoire for the viola da gamba, their versions of the sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach must have had in all their actions an excellent critical both for the public and by the press. In 2004 he, along with Alberto Martínez Molina, the recording of these sonatas for the Arsis label.

He is cofounder, with soprano Mariví Blasco, and director of the Accademia del Piacere group, specializing in the interpretation of the musical repertoire of the Italian Seicento. He is the founder with his brother Rami Alqhai of ALQHAI & ALQHAI label that has produced the album Le Lacrime di Eros-Accademia first CD, Les du ciel et Violes de l’enfer dedicated to the music of Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray, and has just released the third CD of the group, Amori di Marte.

Despite his youth is required by the most important chamber groups from the national and international early music. His dizzying career as a concert work has taken him to numerous and famous formations, nowadays usually works with Hesperion XXI (Jordi Savall) and Il Suona Speaker (Vittorio Ghielmi). Founding member of More Hispano (Vicente Parrilla). It offers regular concerts throughout Europe, Japan, USA and Latin America.

As a soloist he has performed with orchestras in the likes of Spain’s National Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of Galicia, Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne (Michael Corboz), Sevilla Baroque Orchestra and Al Ayre Spanish, among others.

He has made numerous recordings for labels (Alia Vox, Glossa, Winter & Winter, Tactus, Arsis, Enchiriadis, etc..) Televisions and radios around the world.

In addition to early music, has worked as a soloist in performances of flamenco at the Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla and also makes forays into the field of contemporary music and Jazz.

Since 2009 he is artistic director of FEMAS, Early Music Festival Sevilla.

This album contains no booklet.