Balkan Baroque Band

Fortunately, the wanderings of Jean-Christophe Frisch, the veteran artistic director of the XVIII-21 Le Baroque Nomade, brought him to the Balkans on the lookout for a new style of baroque performance. The Balkan Baroque Band was founded on an idea: a return to the musical Europe of centuries gone by, which is to say to a vibrant continent criss-crossed by journeyman musicians exchanging ideas and, in doing so, enriching their music... even if traveling by carriage was more perilous and time-consuming than air travel.

The members of the Balkan Baroque Band come from every corner of the Balkans and have two things in common: their virtuosity, and a penchant for ‘excavating’ the old music of their homelands. Which is how they came to play programs which combine much-loved compositions with hidden treasures, like the works they will be playing tonight by the Slovenian composer, Ivančić. The ensemble has a fiery temperament and an authentic sound that has scant respect for the artificial borders raised by empires ancient and modern—borders that have never really managed to pin the music down.

The Balkan Baroque Band is sponsored by the BNP Paribas Foundation, the Institut Français and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. The ensemble is resident at Le Phénix, the National Theatre of Valenciennes, France.