Fake Orchestra (SLO)
Fake World
AKKU, 2008. november 29. (Saturday),10:00 PM
Performers:
Ana Vipotnik (voice)
Jelena Ždrale (violin, voice)
Primož Fleischman (saxophone, voice)
Igor Leonardi (guitar, folk instruments)
Nino De Gleria (bass guitar)
Blaž Celarec (conga, percussion instruments)
Aljoša Jerič (drum)
Fake Orchestra is a Slovenian "orchestra" which fuses Slavic folk, Latin jazz, African guitars and balafons, avant garde tendencies and pop sensibilities. The cover of Fake Orchestra's new CD Fake World shows a smiling golden elephant romping across a tangerine sky, blowing stars from his trunk. Elsewhere on the cover are mermaids, biped UFOs, fish carrying buildings on their backs, and monkeys wearing red sneakers. The paintings are by Belgrade-based artist Dragan Radović, and they are a perfect illustration of the band's music: colorful, festive, comic, a strange but beautiful surrealist dream.
(...)
The group's versatility and defiance of convention make it impossible to categorize them. "That's why we call the band Fake Orchestra," says guitarist and bandleader Igor Leonardi. "Because we play all these styles, it's not really one band." Fake began as a jazz ensemble. How did folk music get into the mix? "It came spontaneously," Leonardi says. "Every member of Fake Orchestra brings their own ideas and their own repertoire. Ana, our singer who does the Slovene songs, was taught these traditional songs by her father. Our other singer, Janja, is an actress - she sings more cabaret and Latin stuff, meaning Spanish, French, Italian songs. Jelena [Ždrale], our violinist, has Balkan roots - she is from Bosnia - so she brought these Bosnian songs and Macedonian songs, of which we also have quite a few. So that's how this record came about. This is kind of a compilation of what was happening over a period of five years. It was very hard to decide which song of each style to put on, because we could have a whole album of Slovene songs, Macedonian songs, or cabaret songs."
(...)
"It's kind of like a collage," explains Leonardi. "When we play live, we go from one song into Ana Vipotnik another, mixing different styles and rhythms and melodies. We put them together and we add harmonies. We try to mix it all up, but still keep all these elements as they originally are, and not adapt them one to another too much."
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Since the 1980s, Leonardi has been a prolific composer of music for Slovenian theater and film productions – "from A to Z, including all the orchestration," he says. His score for the film Spare Parts won the prize for the best Slovenian film music last year, and he has more projects in the works with the film's director, Damjan Kozole. But with Fake's growing popularity at home and abroad – the band recently gigged in Ireland - Leonardi has had to prioritize. He says, "For now, I've put aside theater music so I'll have more time to concentrate on the band and bring us to another level, so we can play and tour more." The African flavor of many of the arrangements was inspired by Leonardi's travels in Africa, visiting Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Niger. He came away from the experience with a deep respect for African music. "There I saw and heard the roots of jazz, especially on these balafons, which are marimbas. Some of them have pentatonic tuning, others have regular diatonic scale. In these pentatonic tunings - this is the basis of blues, with these blue notes – the way they were phrasing these melodies were just like some phrases that I had heard in jazz."
Leonardi also found an important influence in the United States, where he lived for a long time. "I went there first for just two months, as a part of a summer holiday to go check out the jazz scene,"he says. "I happened to stay there for eight years. I met some other musicians, and started playing right away." In a workshop at a San Francisco art event, he met Don Cherry. Cherry had been a sideman of Ornette Coleman's and had helped to pioneer "free jazz". He had traveled widely throughout the world and was one of the first to use ethnic instruments in jazz. In that first meeting, he and Leonardi jammed together on African instruments – Leonardi on kalimba and Cherry on the doussn'gouni.
(...)
Cherry taught Leonardi about harmolodics, Ornette Coleman's theory of music. "It incorporates rhythm, melody, and harmony at the same level," Leonardi says. "It means that all three are equally important and it allows for free improvisation within a jazz form. There's a lot more to it, but basically Don explained that Ornette's theory helps you find your own sound - it allows you to play with your own sound."
(...)
In some concerts, the orchestra features guest artists. Some perform on Fake World, including accordionist Drago Ivanuša, trumpeter David Jarh (formerly in Quatebriga), and Boštjan Gombac, clarinetist and singer for the well-known Slovenian band TerraFolk. His forceful vocal antics add razzle-dazzle to Fake's version of "Fly Me to the Moon". "It's a great privilege to have so many musicians that you can just call up and tell them, ‘OK, come play,' and nobody will ask you what the fee is," Leonardi says. "This spontaneous development – we've been able to maintain it, and it has come to fruition now."
Despite the fact that the band is so large and includes musicians from such different backgrounds, he says it's not hard for them to find common ground. "All these people that are in the Fake collective are here for the reason of music. It's for the love of the music, and for the love of having fun, and just being together and improvising. We are always improvising." True to his jazz roots, Leonardi finds improvisation to be one of the most gratifying elements of playing music. "When you improvise, something unpredictable happens," he says. "Your inspiration can take you anywhere. You can play melodies you have never heard before. When you play them, maybe a few milliseconds before the audience hears them, you hear them in your head. That's when you feel that you are at one with something that's beyond you. It's so spiritual sometimes, and refreshing. You are discovering new things, and it fulfills you. You feel at one with the world, which we humans need. We always need to belong somewhere, to feel that we are not all alone in the universe.”
Date: 2008. november 29. (Saturday), 10:00 PM
AKKU, VII. Kazinczy str. 21.
Tickets: [+36 (1) 786 2933]
More information: MySpace