BALLAKÉ SISSOKO, VINCENT SEGAL & PIERS FACCINI

This is a story of friendship and music. In 2009, the kora player Ballaké Sissoko and the cellist Vincent Segal decided to make an album that would capture the musical conversations they had been weaving together over the years.
With over 200 concerts, from Europe to China and the US to Brasil, this beautiful music has graced prestigious concert halls such as the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Barbican in London, the Fundação Gulbenkian in Lisbon and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Two souls, united by a sense of freedom and momentum that seem to melt and find echoes of Manding, Baroque, Brazilian and Gypsy in each other. This freedom is the sound of two musicians who are masters of their own instrument, artistry and tradition, who are able to transcend all that to concentrate on every breath, every sound, their own dialogue and to put all their attention onto the beauty of the moment.

Over the years, Faccini, has often made of his songwriting, a passion for pursuing the kind of cross-cultural dialogues that have long been heard on Mediterranean shores throughout the centuries, bridging southern Europe with the Near East and Africa.
His songs act as an eulogy filled with regrets and somber sorrow that begs to be addressed or redressed, but with notes of hope, it blossoms within us a brimming emotion born of the internal monologues of our own lives, our own reflections. The cyclical, Folk-like, call and response forms in these songs calls then to us, to those with voice. Asks us, what are we going to do with the rest of our time in the world, what are we going to do with the rest of the world? The theme returns, shifting in musical shape, the questions remain, unanswered, rhetorical.