Colours of Ostrava 2003
Česká spořitelna EU statutární město Ostrava

Artists / GORAN BREGOVIC and his Wedding and Funeral Band

Goran Bregovič Roots in the Balkans where he stems from, head in the 21st Century which he fully inhabits, Goran Bregovic's music marries sounds of a gypsy brass band with traditional Bulgarian polyphonies, those of a guitar and traditional percussion with a curious rock accent…. all against a background of a bedevilled string orchestra and deep sonorities of a male choir, creating music that our soul recognises instinctively and the body greets with an irresistible urge to dance.

Born in Sarajevo of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father. After a few years of (very unenthusiastic) music studies at the conservatory (violin), Goran forms his first group "The White Button" at the age of sixteen. Composer and guitar player ("I chose the guitar because guitar players always have most success with girls"), he admits his immoderate love for rock n'roll. "In those times, Rock had a capital role in our lives. It was the only way we could make our voice heard, and publicly express our discontent without risking jail (or just about)..."

Studies of philosophy and sociology would most certainly have landed him teacher of Marxist thought, had the gigantic success of his first record not decided otherwise. Follow fifteen years with his group "The White Button", marked by marathon-tours and endless sessions of autographing in which Goran plays youth idol in Eastern countries until he's sick and tired of it.

At the end of the eighties BREGOVIC takes time away from this permanent hustle-bustle to compose music for Kusturica's "Times of the Gypsies", and to make his childhood dream come true: to live in a small house on the Adriatic coast. The War in Yugoslavia shatters this, and many other dreams, and Goran has to abandon everything to find exile in Paris…

Goran Bregovič MUSIC FOR MOVIES

Coming from the same background, the same generation, survivors of the same experiences, Goran BREGOVIC and Emir KUSTURICA formed a tandem which didn't need words to communicate. After "Times of the Gypsies" Goran had a free hand to compose the original soundtrack for "Arizona Dream". The music lives up to the film - poetical, original and incredibly enhancing. "One of the great things about Emir's movies is that they show life exactly as it is - full of holes, hesitations and unexpected events. It's this imperfect, unorganised side that I wanted to preserve above all. Even the songs recorded with Iggy are very under-produced. There's just his voice and behind it a gypsy-orchestra blowing into old pre-war trumpets and cow's horns. It's really very simple." What Goran doesn't say is that it's probably one of Iggy's best performances over the past ten years. What he doesn't say either is that this apparent simplicity belongs only to artists of exceptional talent.

Patrice Chereau entrusts him with the music for "La Reine Margot", Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Goran delivers a majestic piece with rock accents.

The music for Emir Kusturica's "Underground", Palme d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, was also signed by Goran. But not the following film. A three year collaboration on "Underground" has worn everyone out and Emir has to find a whole new team for his next film "White Cat Black Cat".

Recently Goran composed spicy music with a "kletzmer" aroma for the "Train de Vie" of Radu MIHAELANU acclaimed by the critics in Venice, Sao Paulo, Berlin and by the public everywhere it was shown.

He has since devoted himself to the interpretation of his own music and lent himself to a second stage-career. Without completely abandoning the movies, however: Nana DJORDJAZE " 27 Missing Kisses " in 2001, Unni STRAUME "Music for Weddings & Funerals" in 2002 (original music and the main male role).

MUSIC FOR THEATRE

Goran Bregovič "Silence of the Balkans" was a very ambitious multimedia project performed in 1997 at Thessaloniki, under the direction of Slovenian Tomaz PANDUR with video images by Boris MILJKOVIC . Then a collaboration with Teatro Stabile from Trieste for whom he wrote the stage music for a very unusual "Hamlet", and Goran Bregovic starts enjoying writing for the theatre. Follows a collaboration with one of the most "in" Italian directors, Marco BAILANI for whom, commissioned by the Festival NOVECENTO in Palermo, he writes the music for "The Children's Crusade" (created November 1999). Recently Bregovic wrote music for a stage setting of Dante's "Divine Comedy" (conceived as a triptych, of which the first part Inferno was premiered at the THALIA THEATRE in Hamburg in January 2001, followed in February 2002 by Purgatory and Paradise). The director is Goran's long time work complice, Tomaz PANDUR from Slovenia.

MUSIC FOR CONCERTS:

For over ten years, since he abandoned pure rock in 1985, the music of BREGOVIC had never been performed live. This all changes in 1995 when, with a band of ten traditional musicians, a choir of fifty singers and a symphonic orchestra, he undertakes a series of concerts in Greece and Sweden followed by the concert given October 26th at the Forest National of Brussels for an audience of 7500. Very few gigs in 1996 as the idea of a hundred and twenty performers on stage scared organisers.

In June 1997, the group is reduced to fifty musicians for a two hour concert with the music he composed for films. And it's one success after another. He undertakes a triumphal tour throughout Europe with his Wedding and Funeral Band presenting live his most beautiful pieces from the famous " Ederlezi" (Time of the Gypsies) to the " In the Death Car" (Arizona Dream) and the energetic "Kalasnikov" (Underground) taking off as delirious audience echoes the with the powerful "Juris" (Charge ! !). The number of entries - between 3,500 and 10,000 per concert - and the concert given May 1st at the Piazza St. Giovanni in Rome in front of 500.000 people confirm that his music now has a real impact on an international level.

Goran BREGOVIC continues his career, and the young local rock star of the 70s and the 80s asserts his authority as a mature, successful, international composer.

MUSICAL COLLABORATIONS:

Like a happy grown up child, Goran is amazed to be collaborating with such important performers from diverse cultures - people he would have asked for an autograph not so long ago : Iggy Pop, whom he totally reinvents (Arizona Dream 1993), Ofra Haza (La Reine Margot,1994), Cesaria Evora (Underground 1995), Scot WALKER in UK, Setzen Aksu in Turkey, George Dalaras in Greece, Kayah in Poland.

SELECTED RECORDINGS:

" Le Temps de Gitans " Polygram/Universal
" Arizona Dream " Polygram/Universal
" Toxic Affair " Polygram/Universal
" La Reine Margot " Polygram/Universal
" Underground " Polygram/Universal
" Ederlezi " compilation Polygram/Universal
" Bregovic & Kayah" BMG Poland
" Songbook " Polygram/Universal
" Music for Films " Polygram/Universal
" Tales from Weddings Polygram/Universal and Funerals"

Special Projects

Goran Bregovič Giovanni FERETTI of the legendary Italian group CSI, art director of " Bologna 2000 ", asked Goran BREGOVIC to be the ambassador of music from the orthodox countries for a night-long fiesta on June 27. Goran called it "Hot Balkan Roots" and invited three brass bands (one from Bulgaria, one from Rumania and another one from Serbia) and a group of Russian female voices. A joint concert of BREGOVIC and CSI topped it all and the party was repeated on June 29 at the prestigious NUOVO AUDITORIUM DI ROMA.

To start off his Italian tour in Summer 2000, Goran concocted a "Big Wedding in Palermo" for the Santa Rosalia Celebration on July 14, for which he shared artistic direction with the famous musicologist and composer from Naples, Roberto de SIMONE. For just one very special night, Goran a assembled artists from countries that he calls his "musical feeding-ground" - between Budapest and Istanbul. To Goran's music and to images of video director from Belgrade, Boris MILJKOVIC, Slovenian and Greek dancers danced under direction of a gifted Rumanian choreographer, Edward CLUG. And once again he called on the brass bands (a wedding with no brass band is no wedding) to lead 80 brides and bridegrooms each from opposite parts of the beautiful town of Palermo to the central square where, around three in the morning, they met with Clug's professional dancers and Goran's Weddings and Funerals Band for a long final wedding dance.

In June 2002, Goran BREGOVIC united three star singers from three religions with the Moscow orthodox choir, a string section from Tetouan in Morocco, and his Weddings and Funerals Orchestra, for a special project called "Tolerant Heart" on the theme of reconciliation in the St. Denis Basilica (near Paris). Lucciano Berio invited the same project to his Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome in July, a concert in the Milan Duomo is planned… and it can be said that another side of "contemporary music" composer has been added to Goran's career.

Et maintenant:

After tours across Europe and South America during the whole of 2002 and four triumphant concerts in Paris in November (two in the underground "Bataclan" and two in the temple of classical music "Théâtre des Champs Elysées"), Goran starts work on his new project: "Bregovic's Carmen with a Happy End", the first Carmen with a Balkan accent. The piece will be a combination of fake documentary film (collaboration with a wonderful film director, Milos RADOVIC) and naive theatre with live music - of course - and will be premiered in Italy in March 2003.

"Carmen" tours in the Spring, concerts in Scandinavia, France, Rumania, Spain, a rendering of "Tolerant Heart" at the Festival of Sacred Music in Fez, Morocco in June, then Summer Festivals across Europe, US and Australia for the Fall… gypsy life continues for this eclectic composer figure.

LAST MINUTE:
Goran's concert has been awarded the prize for last year's BEST FOREIGN ACT in Argentina!




LA VANGUARDIA, 21 April 2001

BREGOVIC IN ALL HIS SPLENDOR

GORAN BREGOVIC

Place & Date : " Palau de la Musica ", 19/IV/2001.

Little by little, with no unnecessary haste, with that blessed calm that illuminates solid success far from superficial media fireworks, the original music of Goran Bregovic has gained a real following in our country. For the past four years he has attracted the sensibility of most varied audiences in Europe letting them taste something that started out as original film-track music, and that ends up anchored in our orphic subconscious as the most beautiful, captivating, cross-breed visual symphony that has been woven over this last decade of the XX century. It is a mind-blowing return trip with no destination or port of arrival.

We, the Spanish music-lovers, have joined the pied-piper procession of this Yugoslav (in heart and soul), in July 1998 during the sinuous dance of the "Pyrénées Sud" Festival. His unquestionable power of attraction has been proven by this second passage in Barcelona where a crowd followed his stage epiphany in Palau de la Musica, nudged by "Kalasnikov", letting its spirit dance an "Underground Tango" with "Queen Margot" to relieve the "Ausencia" of "Time of the Gypsies"
(translator's note: all these are titles of either songs or films for which Bregovic wrote music).

The painstaking travels of this Ulysses of the ear-ocean was generously rewarded. For Goran (according to his own words) the reward was to perform in this most beautiful of concert halls. For those of us who appreciate the hypnotic power of his music, it was to finally hear it under best possible conditions and to be able not only to profit from the contents and the whole, but also from the form in its most minute details, happy to see Bregovic and his inseparable alter-ego, the hyper-filmic Ognjan Radivojevic, faces lit up with joy.

Alongside the author and musical director of this "invention" we find forty musicians of different formations: string orchestra, a male choir, a trio of Bulgarian voices and the ear-blowing brass of the Funeral and Wedding band who, lure us with magnetic force into Bregovic's complex universe. A magnificent concert, one of the greatest marvels to be heard on stage today.

The Balkan Soul offers us not only reasons for fear and weariness as in their latest belligerent exploits. From the mud appear also flowers of incomparable splendour and beauty. Kusturica has made us see them. Bregovic has made us hear them. Together or individually, they bequeath for the artistic archives of the Volcano of Europe the most vivifying lava that one can imagine. May gods and muses of art replace devils of war and disaster. So be it.

Mingus B. FORMENTOR

EL MUNDO , Thursday 26 April 2001

GORAN BREGOVIC
SYNTHESIS OF THE BALKANS

Performers: Goran Bregovic (voice, electric guitar), Ognjan Radivojevic (percussions, accordion, voice, musical direction), Soloists of the Philip Koutev Ensemble (voices), Polish string orchestra, Belgrade Choir, Wedding and Funeral Band.
Place: Congress Hall, Madrid.
Date: April 23 2001.

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MADRID.- If it weren't for his striving towards a folly of disparate sound and his pretentiously pompous taste, we could consider that the place of the Yugoslav Goran Bregovic's music is in the European, and even World avant-garde.

His capacity to synthesize all musical cultures of the Balkans and to pep them up with that particular nuance that renders them contemporary, and his inborn sense for internal rhythm of sequences on stage, make his concert one of the most risky, devastating and attractive events going.

Not so long ago he was known for original music tracks for the famous films of his compatriot Emir Kusturica ("Times of the Gypsies", "Underground"). But soon we learned that within the shy soul of Goran Bregovic hides a rocker spirit, inspired by old quintessence of the 'genre', refurbished by post-punk rebellion.

With such artistic ingredients, plus a great passion for his home-land, its traditional music and contemporary tragedies, Goran has construed a unique and inimitable musical structure endowed with virtues and excesses inherent to that existential conglomerate.

The mysterious and sublime echo of the three Bulgarian voices, the opaqueness and density of the powerful male choir from Belgrade (15 voices) and a large array of string instruments are overshadowed by what Bregovic calls his "Wedding and Funeral Orchestra", seven gypsies who blow their brass instruments with an irresistible drive.

In front of them, the master of ceremonies, Radivojevic, beats pitilessly his percussions reminding us of a Japanese Kodo master. Next to him, Goran Bregovic, the feverish imagination that has conceived this futuristic universe, sits attentive, innocent-looking, as if he never broke a plate in his life. Geniuses are like that.


Alvaro FEITO


EL PAIS, Wednesday 25 April 2001

OLÉ, GORAN !!

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Goran Bregovic, Wedding and Funeral Band , String Orchestra from Poland, three Bulgarian voices and the Male Choir from Belgrade. The Congress Hall, Madrid April 23 2001.

One of the most beautiful symphonies of the Old Europe. Polish violins and violas weave a musical canvas on which a clarinet from the Balkans draws arabesques that incite our feet to set off dancing a Central-European tango. Over the strings, three female Bulgarian voices break the bomb-like thumping of a gentleman in black resembling a Mongolian worrier. It's Ognjan Radivojevic who gets up to conduct the solemn Serbian Male Choir. Stage left enter seven gypsies of the Wedding and Funeral Band who madly blow into their brass instruments, while stage right, discretely appears Goran Bregovic, in a white linen suit.

With these disparate and apparently contradictory elements, Bregovic, who relentlessly observes his companions (40 on stage) with an expression that varies from amazement to bemusement, creates the most breath-taking music on this continent. Music that deals with two transcendent issues: love and death.

His art is exciting tight-rope walking - it does not abide by media strategies or conjectural interests - it stretches between classicism and Balkan square-dance, the contemporary and the popular, sacred music a la Pärt or Gorecki and the rowdy gypsy brass band. He sets off from the tradition without falling into the trap of traditional music. Almost three hours of music - intense, vigorous, colourful, passionate, exotic, fascinating.

Carlos GALILEA

ABC, Wednesday, April 25 2001

GORAN BREGOVIC : MORAL AND SHIVERS

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Goran Bregovic concert
Place: Congress Hall. Date : April 23.
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The fashion of reviving all sorts of popular music in most spectacular manners has recently set its heart on musical world of the Gypsies. It's been sixty years since the Belgian guitarist Django Reihhard conducted, for the first time, an orchestra, becoming thus the greatest reviver of Gypsy music. Today a number of names join him in this enterprise, but no one does it with the intelligence of the Yugoslav Goran Bregovic. The result of his inventions resembles no other. He is light years from them, both by means but even more by his ingenuity.

You will probably remember that Bregovic has already stormed through our theatres two years ago. He was accompanied by four entities who interpreted his music originally made for films, his compositions for the rock group Bijelo Dugme, and his symphonic ideas that had no other aim but to be recorded. This Spanish tour keeps the same interpreters, but the repertoire reveals new pieces, flashes of his new album.

Three female voices from the Bulgarian choir "Philip Koutev", thirteen masters of the Polish String Orchestra, fifteen singers of the Belgrade choir and a brass septet (known as The Wedding and Funeral Orchestra) are in the service of a permanent contrast between the most advanced technology of musical construction and a pinch of folkloric perfumes from the Balkans. Bregovic does not forget to add to this vast sound melting pot the attraction of several Rock and Roll pieces, conveniently tinted with powerful traditional inspiration.

During a three-hour spectacle, Goran Bregovic excels in singing, acoustic and electric guitar, synthesisers and percussions. With the complicity of a capital character in this project, the conductor Ognjan Raidvojevic, adding percussions, accordion to his multiple talents.

TV documents cannot convey the emotions that these people awake, because they only show the appearance. The colour of difference between identities of these peoples cannot be felt on TV. But Goran Bregovic has managed to bring to us, in several buses, a big bunch of live images, that - like some gigantic powder-keg, provided us with an X-ray image of the cynical Europe that we all inhabit.

Luis MARTIN