Open Audition in Birmigham

In order to get to know some local refugee musicians and see their suitablity for this project we held an open audition at the CIP centre in Birmingham. It was a very enjoyable couple of hours as we had a jam and then the guys ( there where no women) each did a short performance. There was musicians from Conga, Cameroon, Albania and Iran and there was some beautiful music indeed.

Majit is an Iranian musician who emulates his traditional music and instruments on keyboard. I would normally prefer to hear the original instruments but I found his playing and style very effective. His keyboard had settings that enabled him to play the quarter tones that feature in Iranian music. He had to order the settings on a card from Iran as they are not available here, I am sure some creative musicians here could do some interesting stuff with that.

Unfortunately not everybody could be chosen and I had to choose in such a way to compliment the musicians from the other countries. We had some amazing singers from the Congo at the CIP audition but I couldn't use them as Italy will also be providing Congalese singers. I will be looking to hear these guys in future though as the air became hazy when they sang and I felt my worries melt, beautiful voices singing beautiful music!