The Band
Srđan Mijalković – Tenor Saxophone. An experienced jazz
player, he played in “Mašta Bašta” group and “Collision”. Studied a clarinet in
the Belgrade Faculty of Music Arts. He is also a regular member of a Serbian
Military Orchestra.
Aleksandar Hristić – Drums. Member of a Belgrade
improvisational band”Buran”, a regular player in monthly “Improve” sessions in
Belgrade. Also involved in movie arts as a graduated student of Danube Movie
Academy.
Vanja Todorović – Double Bass. Coming from a few KUD –
“Cultural Art Society” folklore music ensembles with a big international
experience. Studied with Vladimir Novičić – a renowned Serbian bass player.
Studied Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Film and Television direction.
Igor Mišković – Guitar. Graduated in Belgrade Academy of
Fine Arts, classical music department. Studied with Radomir Mihajlović – Točak,
a famous Serbian rock/jazz guitar player. A member of Berklee Umbria 2011
group. Also playing in Soul Jazz band “Dirty Mind” in Belgrade.
THE STORY BEHIND THE HASHIMA
Hashima concept began as a cycle of poems that were inspired by
“ghost island” Hashima photos shown on internet from time to time. Famous
Serbian writerMiloš Crnjanski‘s sumatraism with the
Sumatra island serving as a symbol of hope for better future, here is developed
as a symbol of true devastation of the European spirit and hope for it to be
acknowledged and possibly revived. Written by Igor Mišković, verses were
alternating from “reality” to island in each line. Example:
I
Clock hands latency
Ruins karsted yawn
Barking fleshless pass the window glasses
Concrete junk seagulls
Accepting the nature of a leaking balloon
Buildings wall-less contours
Release air burn earth
Water flooding the island
Scotch-taped wounds
Barely visible to the Eye withers
After the wake
Gently
Everything
is
forgotten.
Building up a music concept:
Musical inspiration for the band came from the annual Belgrade Jazz
Festival concerts that gathered some of the finest jazz groups. Mostly concerts
of Wayne Shorter Quartet, Esbjörn
Svensson, Dave Holland Quintet, Dave Liebman, Enrico Rava, Joachim Kuhn,
Charles Lloyd… Free improvisation postulates were used as a
basic music idea for the bands sound, as opposed to a typical blues or bop
sound of a group. Also, a jazz quartet combo had been decided as a form of
expressing this idea.
The band was slowly built with a few months of preparation in the free
improvisation rehearsals. Music dynamics were the first quality that was built.
Also, trying out different kinds of sounds on each instrument was something
that was being crucial to the bands quality.
Soon, the band reached an organic state of communication that was ideal
for working on an original compositions. In the rehearsals of the new
material, a lot of art cinematography was discussed, mostly European art
directors as: Michelangelo Antonioni (ITA), Andrey Tarkovski (RUS), Živko
Nikolić (YU), Alain Resnais (FRA),…
It became evident that the music had a great connection to these movies.
And some of it was composed with the movies in mind. For that reason,
introducing a VJ projections of movie sequences was considered a great match to
the live playing of the band.
Future
plans for the band are recording of a CD and touring the jazz festivals across
the Europe.
