"JAZZ FACTORY" - FINAL DAY

The following artists will be performing tonight Friday, November 14, 2008 at the Amir Taz Palace starting at 7:00 PM. Free admission

Alex Wilson (UK)
As a composer, arranger, performer and educator, Alex Wilson is one of the UK’s foremost Latin music producers. He has travelled over fifty countries to perform music in a multitude of projects. In 1993, after gaining a degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering from the University of York, he embarked on a professional career as a pianist, being snapped up to perform and record with several important artists. Of his five solo albums, his latest, Inglaterra, has been a worldwide hit on the salsa scene.
As a composer and musical director Alex has attracted commissions from NITRO (Britain’s leading black theatre company), the Royal Opera House, the Royal Northern College of Music and the Society for the Promotion of New Music. He has worked as a record producer for various artists, most recently Gwyn Allen in I Love Louis – A Creole Tribute to Louis Armstrong.
Alex was born in the UK and was brought up in Britain, briefly in Sierra Leone followed by Austria and Switzerland and has also studied in the US.
http://www.alexwilson.net/

Toufic Farroukh (Lebanon) & Charbel Rouhana (Lebanon)
Toufic Farroukh is a saxophone player and composer of jazz with a middle-eastern flavour stemming from his bi-cultural roots in Lebanon and France. His brother was a saxophone player and it was him who guided him to this instrument and taught him it's ABCs.
When he moved from Beirut to Paris, where he studied music in the conservatory and in the Advanced College of Music, saxophone was his first goal. His familiarity with it emerged through modern music, particularly the alto saxophone.
In fact, he did not study jazz and its roots at all, nor played jazz on the saxophone. Despite what he learned from the musical institutions in Paris, he is still a self-made musician, who learns and composes by himself. Since then, he started writing his own music.
Hear his music at: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=182228061

Charbel Rouhana is a Lebanese oud player, born in 1965 in Aamchit, Lebanon. Charbel pursued his music education at the Holy-Spirit University in Kaslik and obtained his diploma in oud instrumentation in 1986 and his M.A. in Musicology in 1987.
One of his major achievements is establishing a new methodology in playing the oud. This method was published and adopted by the National Conservatory of Music and the Faculty of Music in the Holy Spirit University, where he has been teaching since 1986. During the 80's he was member of Al-Mayadine ensemble, playing alongside Marcel Khalife.
Rouhana has been performing live events since 1984, touring several countries, venues, and festivals. He is also a winner of several national awards, Charbel also won the first prize at the Hirayama Competition in 1995 in Japan, for Best Composition, Hymn of Peace.
http://www.charbelrouhana.net/

BSB (Netherlands)
Sean Bergin is a saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator and band leader. Born in South Africa in 1948 he was naturally influenced by the rich South African jazz and being in Amsterdam in the 1970’s the creative ideas of the improvisers got under his skin. These different elements led to an original sound of his own. In 2000 he won the Boy Edgar prize, a top Dutch jazz award.
Victor de Boo started to play drums at the age of 12. He has a history of performances with great bands and musicians touring Holland, Europe, USA , Canada, Australia, India and Indonesia. He has released two recordings as a band leader: Made By Mates (1998) with Dale Barlow and Scott Tinkler and Live At The Bimhuis (2000) with Wolter Wierbos and Anton Goudsmit as well as contributing to a number of other albums. Recently he has been working with the Sean Bergin Trio, JC Trans Orchestra, Sven Schuster Quartet as well as other bands.
Jacko Schoonderwoerd, Bass Guitar, was born in 1962 in Amsterdam. He has participated in many projects and recordings such as Nansika , also with Sean Bergin and Victor de Boo, an album of South African jazz standards written by Abdullah Ibrahim and members of the Blue Notes.

André Ceccarelli Trio (France)
With the release of his solo albums, Ceccarelli in 1978 and André Ceccarelli in 1981, André Ceccarelli became one of European jazz's most promising young musicians. Joined by top-ranked jazz and progressive players, including Didier Lockwood, Jannick Top, Christian Escoude, and Francois Jeanneau, and vocalist Alex Ligertwood of the Brian Auger Band and Santana fame, Ceccarelli set the pace for a pair of memorable recordings.
"Symbolically", André wanted to inaugurate his latest album with the entire Ceccarelli dynasty present: Jean, the father and master drummer from whom the rest flows, but also his brother Jean-Paul and his son Régis. Stephy Haik accompanies him in his Album Carte blanche.
With André Ceccarelli, as every track on this album proves, technical mastery and faculty for adaptation go hand-in-hand with stylistic maturity and musicality.

* All artist biographies taken from the official Jazz Factory Program