Trio Nova join the Festival of Chichester

Bassist Alec Dankworth, guitarist Jorge Bravo and percussionist Demi Garcia Sabat join forces for an eclectic take on jazz, flamenco and Latin music, interspersed with original compositions.
TRIO NOVA 11th JulyTRIO NOVA 11th July
TRIO NOVA 11th July

They are playing this year’s Festival of Chichester as part of the Amici Concerts series, performing at St Pancras Church, Eastgate Square, Chichester on Wednesday, July 11 at 7.30pm under the name Trio Nova.

Hailing from Chile, Spain and the UK, they will fuse their wealth of different musical traditions, from classical music to gypsy jazz.

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“The suggestion for the trio came from Demi, who is the percussionist in my other band, and a good friend of his is the other member of the trio, Jorge,” Alec says.

“Really the main reason for it is that everybody has a slightly-different take on what they consider music, on how they want to play it, and I would say that we each come from slightly-different backgrounds. I come from more of a jazz background. Jorge was born in Chile and he is an amazing virtuoso guitarist who enjoys the music of his own country but has also got into the style of Django Reinhardt and a love of the gypsy jazz style as well as bossa nova.

"Demi is from Barcelona and he plays percussion – Spanish percussion as well as jazz percussion. He has been living in London for a while, and not only is he an amazing percussionist, he is also an amazing cake-maker. It was in his family, but he rebelled and started playing drums! We call ourselves Trio Nova because there is a bossa nova feel to the music. We play a couple of Django Reinhardt tunes and some music from South America, like a Venezuelan piece and a Chilean piece. We have been working together for about a year. We have done a few gigs here and there and we have recorded a few videos which are up on our Facebook page. Primarily we play together when we have got a concert coming up. Unfortunately, Demi lives in south London and Jorge lives north of north London and I live west of west London, but we would just like to play as many gigs as possible.

“It is also about exploring the music. It has been a great journey to be involved in. I was already interested in the music, but with Jorge’s input, we have got some more tunes in styles of music that are very authentic South American. It has all got a very good acoustic sound.”

Alec is on bass.

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“I did start originally on clarinet and sax and switched from that. I had a rock group years and years ago, and the bass player left. I was playing guitar and the bass player left so I had no option but to play the bass. There was a bass guitar lying around and I had been fiddling around with it. I took that up and have been playing ever since. I suppose initially I thought it was an easier instrument than clarinet or sax, but I very quickly found out that there is no such thing as an easy instrument.”

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