The Handover / Luigi Marino

The Handover is as much a ritual as it is an ensemble: the trio of Aly Eissa (oud, Egypt), Ayman Asfour (violin, Egypt), and Jonas Cambien (vintage organ/synth, Belgium/Norway) converge in an expansive, roving tapestry of trance-like, motorik ascension. The trio’s sound draws on Classical Arabic mastery, urban shaabi music & the ritual melodies of rural Egypt with the intensity of avant-garde jazz.

An urgent pulse dances in improvisation with subtle, bending shifts and echoes of the dramatic narratives of Umm Kulthum. With two highly regarded albums on Sublime Frequencies, The Handover’s music opens out still further when witnessed live. They’ve graced the stages of Rewire Festival in The Hague, Counterflows Festival in Glasgow and jazz festivals across Berlin, Copenhagen & Oslo, amongst many clubs in Europe, Egypt & now a Bristol debut.

Just as the silent monolith heralds our beginnings in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey, tonight begins with the spacious reverence of one of the world’s earliest sounds, human hands on a drum skin, adjusting our scope to listen.

Luigi Marino is a sound artist & percussionist and a very active collaborator in the experimental music community across Europe and his home in Bristol. Tonight he presents a solo set on the zarb (Iranian goblet drum). With dextrous, scurrying fingers, Luigi explores deep rhythmic time through ever-evolving patterns. From a young age, Luigi studied classical Persian percussion with Iranian percussionist Mohssen Kasirossafar, who migrated from Mashhad to Luigi’s hometown of Rome. Now a migrant himself, Luigi carries both the seeds and the offshoots of that meeting, maintaining a studied respect for the devotional & classical musical origins while finding a new voice through his own musical meditations and adventurous approach. From Malaysia’s Rainforest World Music Festival to London’s Café OTO, Luigi’s music has travelled widely while remaining rooted in a deeply personal approach.