Kapedani Markelian

Balkan Piano Kapedani Markelian

Markelian Kapedani comes from northern Albania, from the Skoder area, and he brings us his gift of a musical world that crosses Balkans with jazz. It is no longer jazz that incorporates other cultures but it is “other” cultures that incorporate jazz to evolve and become other than what they are. What in some of the compositions of Ellington, Evans, Davis, Weston, Tyner, Tristano, Brubeck etc. were openings onto cultures bordering on jazz are for Kapedani the humus his natural background onto which the improvisational techniques and methodologies of jazz are grafted.