Sunday February 14th, at the Quartz in Brest , the first round of the 61st Championship of Brittany for Bagadoù in the first category took place. It was set in an area of southern Cornouaille.
Bagad Kemper, directed by Steven Bodenes, played a bigouden tune and was ranked second with a score of et 16.65 , nine hundredths of a point from bagad Cap-Caval (ranked first with a score of 16.74). Bagad Bro Kemperle finished the stage (with a score of 16.37).
The championship is therefore totally open and suggests a second round keenly contested for at Lorient’s Festival Interceltique. The performance Saturday August 07, 2010 on the Moustoir stage to find out the next champion of Brittany.
BREIZH BALKANIK : A gust from the East comes to Brittany
In light of their sixtieth anniversary, Bagad Kemper, under the direction of Jean-Louis Hénaff, has come up with "mad e Breiz" as its final production. As unconventional as could be, it displays an alliance of Breton and Eastern Europe music. This new project is the product of the collaborations of the Bagad with the singer and clarinetist Erik Marchand.
For numerous years, this talented musician has easily and respectfully blended with the Breton culture.
« It’s not easy to launch a bagad in such a venture, describes Erik Marchand, first, for reasons that involve the practical method required, secondly because this type of Balkan music is virtuoso music, with about 4 ornamentations around each note. It therefore requires a highly skilled bagad. That leaves but one group like Bagad Kemper working mainly on scores and that similarly to the musicians there, work by hear. It therefore required enormous compositional and transcriptional work, notably from the conductor Jean-Louis Hénaff. » - Ouest France, Monday October 5, 2009.
Breizh Balkanik therefore resembles Breton melodies, but also Serbian, Macedonian and Romanian.
« Jean-Louis Henaff energetically conducts the bagad, that skillfully progresses from one style of music to the other, revisiting the plin and the gwerziou where it crossbreeds oriental accents. All the sections are excellent and each piper ventures musical crossings, tempos, all very original. One admires the coherence and the very beautiful musicality by the incredibly audacious group.
The flugelhorn, saxophone, bass, cello… join with other traditional instruments and present here and there very exotic melodies sounds » - Le Télégramme, October 11, 2009.
Bagad Kemper is accompanied for this event in song by Erik Marchand, by Maud Caron on cello, Gabriel Faure on violin, Gaby Kerdoncuff on the trumpet and flugelhorn, Bernard Le Dréau on the saxophones and clarinet, by Gheorghe Tudorache on the accordion and by Erwan Volant on the bass.
Such a production should not manquer d’intéresser à la fois le réseau des salles publiques françaises, but also a notable number of festivals in Europe! Following here are two excerpts (filmed by antourtan)
Brest : 7 days before the contest
Bagad Kemper rehearses starting this weekend at Nautile à La Forêt Fouesnant in preparation for the first set in the national bagadoù championship for first category, that will take place Sunday, February 14, 2010 at Quartz (Brest).
For this event, the contest will be filmed by An Tour Tan and available through live broadcast at 13h15 on the site “Internet de France 3” at the following address: http://video-direct.france3.fr/player.php?id=692.
There will then be a rendezvous Sunday at 14h55 to find out the results for Bagad Kemper (terroir bigouden).
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