Projects on tour and workshops

 Luis Gimenez Amoros comes from the Valencia region. He combines traditional music from the Spanish Levant (Valencia and Alicante mainly) with musical influences from Europe, Asia and Africa where he has resided as ‘Musician/Ethnomusicology Lecturer’ during the last twenty years.

In his fourteenth album, Luis (former Mariem Hassan’s guitarist among many collaborations) performs with other multi-instrumentalists Valencian musicians known in the World Music industry such as Diego Lopez (L’ham de foc) and jazz artists influenced by the local music of ‘Moros y Cristianos’ (Javier Geras, Fran Ramos and Paco Soler). This trilogy album will be released between 2021-2022 and it aims to evoke how the music from the Spanish Levant remains unique and part of a broad cultural circulation within and beyond the Iberian Peninsula.
 

 The album ‘Pagoda Session’ has been recorded and produced by Luis and Tengku at UPSI studio (Malaysia) and recalls the cultural links from Al-Andalus to the present day with the Asian continent. The band is composed by Du Jiazhen on the Chinese pipa, Syahmi Bin Hussein on the Malaysian gambus (or oud), Sidi Amir on regional percussions from South East Asia (rebana and gendang) and Luis on the acoustic guitar. This musical project has led the author to play in different countries from three continents, however, the uniqueness of the album ‘Pagoda Session’ consists of the intercultural sound of the band where the acoustic instruments are able to narrate their own story and altogether reveal a cultural interaction that has been forging for centuries 

 During 2019-2020,  Luis released a trilogy album entitled ‘Middle Passage’ (recorded in South Africa, Malaysia and Spain). These albums are based on a musical journey from Spain to South Africa (Middle Passage), a historical journey from Al-Andalus to Malaysia (Pagoda Session); and a reflection on this musical journey across Afro-Asia from the Iberian Peninsula in the album ‘Exilis’. Luis performed Middle Passage in the United Kingdom, Spain, Mauritania, South Africa and Malaysia. He performed in formal and informal settings from the mentioned countries with local and international musicians during the launch of this album such as the legendary Mauritanian musicians Koumban and Atage Seyda; the Chinese pipa player Di Jiazhen; the Malaysian musicians Syahmi Bin Hussein on the Malaysian gambus (or oud) or Sidi Amir on regional percussions from South East Asia (rebana and gendang); and several musicians from Cape Town like Eugene Ackerman, Ted Petersen or Kurt Bowers.. 

Trough creative, performative and theoretical studies on ancient Andalusi music, this workshop aims to explore the notion of Convivencia (coexistence) in relation to the inter-cultural rhetoric of ancient Andalusi/Levantine music (since the 9th century) such as the commonalities between the use of frigian and hijaz scale in Spanish music, maqamat in the Middle East, Dastagh in Persia, Hindustani music in India and Ghazal in Malaysia 

Trough creative, performative and theoretical studies on ancient Andalusi music, this workshop aims to explore the notion of Convivencia (coexistence) in relation to the inter-cultural rhetoric of ancient Andalusi/Levantine music (since  In relation to the album 'Middle Passage', this creative workshop proposes a musical and imaginary journey from Spain to South Africa passing through different places on the African continent. In this way, students will use musical elements from a certain geographical area in relation to different musical styles from the Spanish-speaking world in Spain, America and Africa. This workshop aims to enhance musical sensitivity for the study of non- western music and its possible musical fusion within the students' knowledge. The musical styles explored will be: Gnawa, griot music from mali, mauritanian Haul, malian Wassoulou, Tamashek, African fingerpicking guitar, afrobeat, palm wine, Highlife, chimurenga, rumba, maskanda, Malagasy and mbalax.