Al Qantarah Italy
Biography
This ensemble plays medieval Sicilian music. Al Qantarah is the name of a river in eastern Sicily and means "bridge" in Arabic. Sicily has long been a bridge to distant civilisations and since early times its culture has been shaped by the concurrent presence of Hellenic, Arabic and lastly, Norman influences. Al Qantarah’s music evokes the sounds of that multiethnic island in sacred, lay and secular works, as they play on replicas of traditional medieval instruments of the Sicilian, Arabic and Persian traditions
