Fabrizio Cassol (BE)

Plenary panel debate on Saturday 16/09, at 10:30 Discussion group on the future of music education on Friday 15/09, at 15:00

Fabrizio Cassol is a Belgian/Italian saxophonist, composer and music director. He is a shape-shifting musician, an adept of crossbreeding who never ceases to multiply exchanges with musicians from the four corners of the world, exploring improvised music, oral traditions and written musics in order to better play with the borders between genres.

His interest in non-European music started after a trip to the Aka Pygmies in Central Africa and expanded to Asia (especially India) and Africa where he worked with the Mali diva Oumou Sangaré, the Griot Baba Sissoko & the Black Machine, the Indian master of percussion U. K. Sivaraman, the Senegalese Doudou N'Diaye Rose, the Turkish Misirli Ahmed and the Bulgarian Nedyalko Nedyalkov.

For thirty years, he has been the composer and saxophonist of Aka Moon, a real ‘land of welcome’ for a multitude of musicians from the most diverse cultures. He has often worked with choreographers such as Alain Platel (Requiem pour L., Coup Fatal), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the Samoan Lemi Ponifasio, the Congolese Faustin Linyekula, the South African Brett Bailey.

Fabrizio Cassol is the Artistic Director of Medinea at the Lyrical Festival d’Aix-EnProvence. He brings together artists from all over the Mediterranean, each with their own musical heritage. He transmits a method to create music by mixing di erent heritages, notably those of the Arabic world with those of the European world, through a process based on orality and memorisation.

Fabrizio Cassol is a strong ambassador for intercultural dialogue between