ALEXÁNDER PEWLÓ PROJECT

He was born in Madrid in 1986. At the age of 4, he started studying piano at Centro de Formación Musical Tristán,  relying on the experiences of teachers such as Lourdes Pérez or Cristina del Mar Gómer. In 2006 , taught by Nisio Aranguren and Juan Carlos Alonso López, he studied Spanish guitar. Immersed in the improvisation world, he took classes along the pianist and saxophonist Marcelo Peralta in the Escuela de Música Creativa of Madrid.Since 2009, he makes various trips to Crete and Turkey where he specialized and took lessons of baglama, yayli tanbur, lavta, bouzouki, makam, modal composition and orchestration in music of the Mediterranean and Middle East with masters such as Cihan Turkoglu, Evgenios Voulgaris, Christos Barbas, Sinan Ayyildiz, Cem Çelebi, Theodora Athanassiou, Efrén López.

In 2012, she specialized in viola and started getting in touch with the Aberastury Method (Conscient System in the Movement Technique). In love with Cretan music, in 2011, she traveled to Crete in order to start her studies on Modal Music Composition, lyra and Cretan and Turkish traditional music. She received advice from great masters and composers such as Stelios Petrakis, Efrén López, Hristos Barbas, Dimitri Psonis, Tatiana Matsurenko, Clara García… and has made collaborations in various folk music recordings.

An specialist of a number of traditional percussion instruments, which he plays and makes himself. He studied Arabic percussion with Samir Shabi, bendir with the masters Zohar Fresco, David Mayoral, Sergei Sapritchev and Glen Velez, Indian tabla with Shiv Shankar Ray, and Iranian tombak with Pedram Khavarzamini and Bijan Chemirani. He applied that knowledge in projects of ancient music and root music. L’Ham de Foc, Ross Daly & Labyrinth, Stelios Petrakis, Evo, Aman Aman, Miquel Gil, Ana Alcaide, Sabir, La Beniterrània, Lluís Llach… He is also a teacher of Mediterranean percussion in the prestigious Escuela Berklee de Valencia. Currently, he is the producer of La Banda de Pepo’s second album and the recently released album Flamencrow.

Autodidactic multi-instrumentalist. He has deepened his studies on different types of Middle East folkloric music. He learned stringed instruments and studied the theory of makam music with Efrén López and Christos Barbas, afghan rabab with Ustad Daud Khan Sadozai, baglama with Mustafa Dogan and Cihan Turkoglu, and kopuz with Erkan Ogur. In the percussion universe, he learned Afro-Cuban music and drums with Michael Weis. The sound universe of this musician is based on modal music, essential characteristic of the eastern mediterranean music.

Aya El Dika is a Lebanese artist that lives in Madrid. Her repertory as a singer embraces classic Arab music (Muwaxaha, folk song…), as well as traditional music from the Mediterranean,and folk and sacral music from Middle East. Nowadays, she collaborates with artists such as Eduardo Paniaga, and she is training as a dancer of this traditions with Cristiane Azem and other masters, along with her studies in modal music in Spain, Tunisia and Turkey.

With more than twenty years of experience in the ethnic and ancient music world, playing with different formations as multi-instrumentalist in Europe, in recent years, Renzo Ruggiero has specialized in the Nyckelharpa, an 15th century instrument that comes from Sweden, and the santur, ancient instrument of Persian origins, focusing in the study of ethnic and ancient music as well as in traditional repertories. He was chosen by the European orchestra of nyckelharpas. He has been the promoter of the diffusion and teaching of the nyckelharpa in Italy and he is a member of the educative program ‘European Nyckelharpa Training’. Nowadays, he works in Spain as a member of Ana Alcaide’s group, in ‘Rhodes y Chelo’ and he is, as well, developing his artistic project ‘Sapori e Música’. He was hired by ‘Arte y Solera’, one of the best flamenco companies in Japan, and went there to participate in their new show that was launched in Tokyo. He edited his first solo CD ‘Alma’ as a producer, performer and composer.

Since he was young, he started playing drums and, later on, he starts to feel an interest for percussion in general, that from Arabia and Middle East, particularly, which makes him live three years in Tunisia where he studies the three instruments of Eastern Percussion: the Daburka, the Daf/Bendir and the Riq. He has realized stays in Turkey and in the Balkans, studying the rhythmic richness of the music of these countries and has participated in many projects from musical meetings in the Balkans and the ancient Yugoslavia. In the Balkanic countries he learned another percussion instrument that is essential for this kind of folklore; the Tapan, also known as Davul. In parallel, he has trained with many big names of the percussion world such as Glen Vélez, Ruben Van Rompaey, Pedram Khavar Zamini or Zohar Fresco.

Luis Gálvez. Musically speaking, he was autodidactic. He has been a drummer in Dalia and in Pop-Rock La Noche lo Sabe. He has been also a member of Qantara and the music, poetry and dance group Palenque as well as a percussionist in Las Dos en Punto, in the jewish-sephardic music group Safar; in the jazz trio Una Diop Tria; in the play “Mujeres de sangre y fuego” from the Armar teatro company; in the singer Ainda’s tour titled “Pájaros en la cabeza”; in the play of flamenco La Celestina, directed by the company La Recua Teatro (La Puebla de Moltalbán, Toledo); in the group La Baldosa Flotante and in the flamenco group Azerí from Toledo.