AVA

AvA, which in Persian means “Voice”, is an ensemble of four musicians that are experimented in classic and traditional music. They approach a repertory of self-made compositions and lives full of improvisations, rhythms and harmonies along with a wide spectrum of folkloric instruments from Iran, Turkey and Greece. They achieve to create an esthetic that is traditional, new and refreshing.

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 Lourder Pérez or Cristina del Mar Gómer. In 2006 , taught by Nisio Aranguren and Juan Carlos Alonso López, he studied 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 made 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, Efrén López.

In 2008, he graduated in cinematographic composition in Prins Claus Conservatorium and in 2010 he enrolled in a master’s degree in composition in the HKU University of the Arts , both in the Netherlands. He plays two classic Persian instruments, the Tar and the Barbat (Ud.). Being of Iranian origins, he takes influences from his own traditions, which allow him to create a personal and unique sound.

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.

Since he was young, he started playing drums and, later on, he starts to feel an interest for percussion in general. Percussion from Arabia and Middle East, particularly, makes him live three years in Tunisia where he studies the three instruments of Eastern Percussion: the Daburka, the Daf/Bendir and the Riq. He has realized stays in Turkey and in the Balkans, studying the rhythmic richness of the music of these countries and has participated in many projects from musical meetings in the Balkans and the ancient Yugoslavia. In the Balkanic countries he learned another percussion instrument that is essential for this kind of folklore; the Tapan, also known as Davul. In parallel, he has trained with many big names of the percussion world such as Glen Vélez, Ruben Van Rompaey, Pedram Khavar Zamini or Zohar Fresco.