The Mediant Collective on Tour This Summer

With the support of the Berklee Mediterranean Music Institute, The Mediant Collective band will tour in June 2016, performing more than 10 concerts and offering three clinics in Spain, Greece, Israel, and Turkey. 

By
Agustina Covián
May 17, 2016

The Mediant Collective

Photo c/o of the artist

With the support of the Berklee Mediterranean Music Institute, which aims to bring together performers, artists, teachers, scholars, and students to engage in cultural and music research and to perform the diverse music of the Mediterranean, The Mediant Collective will tour in June 2016. They will perform more than 10 concerts and offer three clinics in Spain, Greece, Israel, and Turkey. The Mediant Collective is a unique collaboration between Turkish vocalist and oboist Elif Çakmut, Greek lutist Vasilis Kostas, and Israeli guitarist Gilad Barakan. The three musicians possess strong regional identities and aim to bring their cultures together by shining a new light on their close, yet very different, traditional folk music. The band was conceived while all attended Berklee, where they first met.

The group has produced original music that fuses their Mediterranean/Middle Eastern sounds with chamber music, jazz, and pop while creating adventurous sounds and colors covering well-known standards from the American repertoire, as well as the repertoires of their respective nations and neighboring countries. By exploring folk music, chamber, jazz, and the use of contemporary arrangements, the group has stretched and redefined the definition of world music as we know it. By seamlessly fusing these elements, The Mediant Collective is bound to make casual jazz and classical listeners sway to their colorful musical vision.  

Listen to The Mediant Collective perform its arrangement of "Evlerinin Önü Mersin" by Kadir Acar and Muzaffer Sarısözen. 

These three musicians have made their mark by playing with some of the greatest musicians around and winning global awards and recognition. Kostas recently collaborated with one of the greatest Greek clarinet players of all time, Petroloukas Halkias, and toured the U.S. with Areti Ketime, a very well-known Greek singer and composer. Çakmut was admitted to the prestigious Istanbul Conservatory at the age of 10 and graduated with honors; she has performed with David Liebman, Terence Blanchard, Brazilian guitarist Guinga, and Dream Theater. Barakan won second place in the Stanley Clarke Scholarship competition, was awarded the Musicians Institute's Outstanding Player Award, and was recently commissioned to write a chamber orchestra piece for the ALEA III ensemble.

Tour Dates

Spain

Greece

Israel