Armenian Ethiopia - A Bridge Between History and Identity

Drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger and performer Cristiano Calcagnile has built a international reputation collaborating with great names of new jazz, contemporary music and pop music as well.

His work is well know in the European experimental scene and his aesthetic is a well balanced melange that remains connected to his attitude to research, developing boarder lined music.

He recorded for label as EMI, Polygram, Edel, Sony, Auand, Amirani Records, Phonometak Labs, RareNoise, Die Schachtel, El Gallo Rojo, Caligola, GoodFellas, Label Bleu and Black Saint among the others.

He extensively tours all over the world invited by international festivals and venues for jazz, rock and avant-garde music. He played at London Jazz festival, Meldown Festival, Vortex, Bimhuis, Porgy&Bess, North Sea festival, Polar Spectacle, Umbria jazz, Novi Sad, Melbourne, Helsinki, Jakarta, Tunis, Mumbai and Lisboa.

He’s now leading of the MULTIKULTI ensemble which have produced a couple of CD “guided” to Don Cherry’s music: “Multikulty Cherry On” 2016 and “The Gift of Togetherness” 2019 – both for Caligola records.

Fabrizio Puglisi is a pianist, improviser and composer born in Catania, Sicily in 1969.

Moving to Bologna in 1987 joined the local scene of improvised and new music co-founding the Collettivo Bassesfere musicians’ association dedicated to experimental music.

Fabrizio lived in Amsterdam from 1998 to 2001 collaborating with Tristan Honsinger, Han Bennink, Ab Baars, Sean Bergin, Ernst Reijseger.

He has collaborated among others with Steve Lacy, Louis Sclavis, Lester Bowie, Don Moye, David Murray, Hamid Drake, John Zorn, Don Byron, Rob Mazurek, William Parker, Butch Morris, Enrico Rava, Michel Godard, Alvin Curran, Mark Dresser and Gunter “Baby” Sommer.

Fabrizio recorded with Han Bennink, Kenny Wheeler, Gunter “Baby” Sommer, Italian Instabile Orchestra, Cristina Zavalloni and Gianluca Petrella.

He is Jazz Piano Professor at Conservatory “Frescobaldi” in Ferrara and at Siena Jazz University.

Photo Credt: Ziga Koritnik

Multimedia visual artist, musician, composer/electric bassist.

Graduated from DAMS, Bologna, in Visual Arts, from Venice Academy of Fine Arts in Painting and then in Sculpture – he obtained a high school diploma from an art school and also a teacher training college diploma. He studied bass with Bruce Gertz (Berklee College of Music, Boston), Cameron Brown and Larry Ridley (Manhattan School of Music, New York). He also attended the Conservatories of Vicenza, Padua and Rovigo, where he studied classical Double Bass and Composition.

A member of the Italian Philosophical Society – he has studied Philosophy at the University of Padua – he is also active in teaching visual and musical arts as well as philosophical sciences.
He has been working in visual and musical art circles since 1985.

Improviser and composer in the fields of jazz and experimentation on his own original projects, mainly focused on relationship among distant artistic declinations, Gianni Mimmo (1957) has built an international reputation for his unique treatment of musical timbre and his exploration of advanced techniques on the soprano saxophone.

His style has developed a unique blend of abstract lyricism and contemporary flavors and his works have been excellently reviewed by international magazines and webzines.

This exploration of Ethiopian nostalgia takes a journey through the haunting and seductive melodies, initiated by 40 Armenian orphans, adopted by Emperor Haile Selassie and becoming the first imperial orchestra of Ethiopia. A tireless teacher, Nerses Nalbandian, inspired many of Ethiopia’s jazz greats like Alemayehu Eshete, Girma Negash and Mulatu Astatqe, and others who reminisce on their teacher’s influence on them and modern Ethiopian music. Nalbandian’s daughter Salpi reflects on her trials and tribulations living in Addis Ababa for over three generations, and seeing the country’s musical greatness and the dark injustices she has had to endure, being imprisoned for four years. The only remaining Armenian musician, Vahe, sings in Ethiopia’s modern music scene, hoping to reconcile his issues with identity, and coping with the loss of memory, as much of Addis Ababa’s city development changes the landscape and the remembrance of this unique crosscultural symbiosis.