Balkan & Brazilian Resonances

Bojan Cvetrežnik graduated in viola from the Ljubljana Academy of Music before pursuing further studies in Berlin and Klagenfurt. He has taught at the Maribor Conservatory of Music and Ballet and played in the Orchestra of the SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana and with Cirque du Soleil. He is the founder of the group TerraFolk, which in 2003 won the BBC World Music Audience Award. David Gordon trained as a mathematician in Bristol before turning to music full-time. He has toured all over the world with the gypsy-tango band Zum, the baroque orchestra The English Concert, the piano-led jazz group David Gordon Trio and the early music/jazz group Respectable Groove. Cvetrežnik and Gordon previously worked together on a crossover recital for performances in England and Wales in 2021 and 2023, for which Cvetrežnik designed a programme that reflected his lifelong experience of exploring, teaching and performing, with a particular emphasis on the music of the Balkans, including a number of original compositions, while Gordon added the influences of Brazilian music, baroque and jazz. This concert will have a similar programme and will include works by Maria Theresia von Paradis and several Slovene composers, Brazilian music and traditional folk music from Romania, Bosnia and Serbia. The violin soloist will be Barja Drnovšek, who trained in Klagenfurt and Ljubljana. Alongside her engagements with classical orchestras, she devotes a lot of time to folk ensembles. She is part of the music education platform Godalkanje, founded and led by Bojan Cvetrežnik.