YAYLA

Yayla is a project in quintet specialized in root music that embraces the whole Mediterranean Basin. It is a joint work of five performers and composers that coincide in the transmission of traditional music as the starting point for the creation of refreshing melodies, rhythms and structures. Instruments from different countries brought out in order to offer a wide spectrum of acoustic sonority while respecting the soul of each.

Sara Islán is an ethnomusicologist from Almeria that has been living in Turkey since 2010, place to where she moved in order to study the musics from the Anatolian peninsula. Since then, she has studied Turkish traditional music in different academies of music from Estambul and taken lessons of singing, bağlama and makan with Gulseven Medar, Mehtap Demir, Ekan Çanakçi and Efrén López, among others. Since 2012, her investigations have specialized in Southeastern Turkey repertories, particularly from the city of Urfa, known for its musical richness. Currently, she is writing her doctoral thesis about melodies of zurna and davul in this region, leaded by Polo Vallejo, Jerome Cler and Victoria Eli. Furthermore, she collaborates as a singer with various projects attached to the mediterranean and Middle East musics. She lives in Urfa since 2012, where she works on her field while continuing her learning.

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 learned 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, Efré 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.

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.

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.