Concert – Dimitri Grechi Espinoza

The Spiritual Meaning of Sound

For this occasion, using the beautiful reverberation of the Church of S. Caterina, pieces from the repertoire of some traditional musical cultures he has had the opportunity to directly experience will be played, such as the Tuareg, Gnawa, and Mali cultures, as well as pieces inspired by the folklore of other musical traditions.

With “The Spiritual Meaning of Sound” he addresses those who, through listening, are able to experience an inner resonance and thanks to this inner resonance can become aware of the quality (sound) that constitutes our deepest essence.

OREB, the title of Dimitri Grechi Espinoza’s latest project, is another name to indicate Mount Sinai, where Moses met God “face to face” in a dialogue that became incandescent material for all of humanity in the Ten Commandments of Teaching. But Oreb is also the mountain where the prophet Elijah, tired and disgusted from killing too much, encounters the silent voice of God. The Lord was not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire; but in a “voice of suspended silence,” barely perceptible to the hearing. It is this quality of silence that the Sax solo of Dimitri Grechi Espinoza expresses: a silent space that needs to be created within oneself before speaking with the Other, before speaking with others.

Gabriella Caramore – host of “Uomini e Profeti” Rai Radio3

DIMITRI GRECHI ESPINOZA was born in Moscow in 1965, attended Jazz Mobile in New York and completed advanced professional courses at Siena jazz with P. Tonolo. In 2000 he founded the musical research group Dinamitri Jazz Folklore, which in 2014 obtained the 2nd place in the Musica Jazz magazine ranking as the best Italian group. In August 2001 he was invited to play at the Pan-African festival in Brazzaville (Congo). From March 2002 to 2003, he collaborated with Goma Parfait Ludovic, director of the Congolese company Yela wa, in the research on the tradition of African healing music with seminars and performances. Since 2004, he has been mainly active in two directions: the application of research results on traditional cultures to the music of the Dinamiti Jazz Folklore group, and the solo concert “Oreb/The Spiritual Meaning of Sound”, in addition to teaching activities. In 2011, he participated in the “Fesival Au Desert” in Mali, and from 2012 to 2014 he directed the project “Azalai-Caravan music” with which he performed at some of the largest European festivals.

Oreb has been performed in some of the most prestigious Italian locations, including:

• Pantheon (Rome), Battistero S. Giovanni (Pisa), St. Giles Cathedral (Edinburgh), Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan), Chiesa della Grande Madre (Turin), , Basilica S. Gaudenzio (Novara)
• Cappella Pazzi (Florence), Planetary (Milan), Batttistero S.Giovanni (Volterra), Uffizi Gallery (Florence), Basilica S. Miniato (Florence), Basilica S. Vitale (Ravenna)
• Cisterna Mirabilis (Naples), Duomo Pozzuoli (Naples). Abbazia di Rosazzo (Udine), Palazzo Liviano (Padua), Basilica S. Maria delle Grazie (Milan).