Claudia Bombardella
An eclectic musician, singer and composer Claudia Bombardella plays various instruments (baritone sax, clarinets, tuba, accordion, steel drum) and for years has been composing and arranging the music for her performances as well as for orchestras and choirs. Born in Luxemburg she studied violin and saxophone, working in Italy with inspired and versatile musician Luca Di Volo, with whom she played for about ten years, performing all over Europe and making 4 CDs. She then taught the saxophone for seven years at the Fiesole Music School.
She follows this with theatrical, jazz and vocal teaching, takes part in composing and arranging performances, including the Wien Volksoper and the Orchestra della Toscana. During recent years she has also been approaching other instruments and the use of voice with unusual tempos and techniques, gaining in refinement and strength. Over the last two years she has ceased working with the duo, but she continues research the music and traditions of nomadic peoples worldwide: a source for the creation of her own music that re-proposes all the sensitivity of the music by which it is inspired.
In 2003 she played in the International Accordion Festival of Wien with Anton Giulio Galeandro. In 2004 she founds the Bombardella Ensemble and makes the CD "Paessaggi Lontani" with her own compositions and arrangements. She sets up the Bombardella Trio, with the project "Ruminando."
The Ensemble:
This is a refined ensemble in which the sound of classical instruments (like violin and cello) is mixed with the more traditional ones (accordion and saxophone), creating atmospheres in which the voice moves freely through ancient songs or original melodies in an expressive way. Classical and creative musicians play together so that the different experiences create a unique ensemble with an eclectic, European air.
In these original compositions, arrangements and classical counterpoints melt with melodies in the style of traditional European music, unsing some ancient texts in the original languages, creating a music that is free of time or space.
"Paesaggi Lontani" (Faraway landscapes)
". . .Over the centuries we have told stories, played tunes, made sounds, and these scraps of communication have remained floating in the air for whosoever is patient enough to listen to them. . .but that which is borne by the air belongs to no one and so it comes about that words mingle with sounds no matter which their culture of origin chances to be. The contents transmute and come into contact with our inmost core, somewhere beyond the mind's reach, were it not for some kind of "awareness."
This long work of composition travels through the most widespread spheres of music and culture in the same spirit as nomadic peoples in the course of their wanderings to pick up the cultural essences of the populations they approach, absorbing them into their own traditions. The compositions move across a variety of folk music styles in a broader pattern, that also includes a sort of "classical" discipline, characteristic of "cultured" music, within which the fragments of the more typical melodies arise, fall apart, and join again. It is not by chance that popular instruments have been chosen to combine with those used for classical music.
The vision is one of landscapes, remote in time and space: from the atmospheres sometimes misty and unfathomable, sometimes turning to urgent and passionate, stories and tales in music take shape. The voices of one culture interlace with another. . .we realize that they are not so far apart. . .that they are deeply tied to those who have taken it upon themselves to preserve them for the sake of their value today.
The voices have an "instrumental" use and the original language texts are intended to help confer a special color, the color in which the secret of a culture that only the heart can comprehend lies embedded. So it is that the instruments dance from style to style, as does the voice, with a lingo that is rather "sensed" than "understood". . .
Claudia Bombardella Ensemble