Festival Musiq'3: Fabrizio Cassol goes classical

The Danube is Europe’s second-longest river, rising in Germany and flowing for 2,850 km via Austria to the Ukraine. Along with Adolphe Sax (whose bicentenary is being celebrated), the river is one of the threads running through this year’s Festival Musiq’3. Guest of honour Fabrizio Cassol and Aka Balkan Moon will provide a multicultural festival opener.

The programme for the Musiq’3 Festival consists for the most part of classical music. So how did Fabrizio Cassol come to be the festival’s key figure? “Although people mainly know me as a saxophonist with Aka Moon and as a jazzman, I did have a thoroughly classical training at the conservatory in Liège, where I graduated in chamber music and the saxophone, among other things,” he says. “And I have continued to thoroughly study our European classical music over the last few decades. For example, I worked on baroque music for a number of Alain Platel’s shows. For Coup fatal, which has just had its premiere in Vienna, I worked with Congolese musicians in relation to European baroque music. It wasn’t out of the blue that Musiq’3 approached me. The festival’s central themes, moreover, are tailor-made for me. My saxophone fits in with the celebration of Adolphe Sax’s bicentenary. And in Aka Balkan Moon I had a project in reserve that is just right for a festival focusing on music from the Danube region.”

You have been involved in numerous multicultural projects, which suggests that you have a distinctive personal way of looking at “classical music”. How do you see it?
Fabrizio Cassol: Reality has taught me that our Western classical music doesn’t really exist on a lonely summit of its own. What is essential to “classical music” is not the fact that it is notated, but the urge to create variations on a particular theme. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven did that: again and again, they started out with a simple theme and made the most of it via a whole range of variation techniques. And exactly that also takes place in lots of other cultures in every corner of the world. Salsa is one good example of what I mean.

Does that also apply to the Bulgarian Balkan music you will be playing at the opening concert of the Festival Musiq’3?
Cassol: Very much so. In the Balkans, Bulgarian music occupies a special position. The Bulgarians are masters of rhythmic sophistication. The way they vary their characteristic asymmetrical rhythms is amazing. It is virtuoso music that gives people energy and sets them dancing and moving. More so than the other Balkan peoples, the Bulgarians are also skilled in vocal polyphony. And what fascinates most of all about this music is its enormous emotional force.

Concretely, how did you guys go about arriving at Aka Balkan Moon?
Cassol: Whether in Arab, Afro-American, or, Bulgarian music, I always try to engage in a thorough dialogue. Sometimes I need ten years or so before we really understand each other. I like to describe Aka Moon as a “terre d’acceuil” [a haven or “home from home” for outsiders – ES]. Musicians who come and play with us do more than just add a little colour. They in no way have to efface themselves in the service of a common end result. In our projects, everyone remains themselves. For Aka Balkan Moon, we succeeded in getting the ideal musicians on board. Not only do the Bulgarians with whom we are collaborating know their own Bulgarian tradition: they are also well-versed in the rest of the Balkan repertoire. Moreover, like us, they are quite at home in jazz and improvisation. The festival’s opening concert seems to me an ideal moment to open the audience’s eyes and ears.

Aka Balkan Moon, 26/6, 20.15, € > 17, Studio 4

FESTIVAL MUSIQ’3 • 26 > 29/6, FLAGEY, Heilig Kruisplein/place Sainte-Croix, Elsene/Ixelles, 02-641.10.20, www.flagey.be