The cellist Francesco Bartoletti who is distinguished in a cultural landscape by his his open spirit, is in fact the initiator of this encounter between jazz and classical music. Soraya Berent will be the subtile link, the delicate thread of the two styles ; she presents him the poly-instumentist Joël Musy and the guitarist Nicolas Lambert who both have shown their talents of orchestration in many projects.
The band Zatar is born, name of this spicy mixture from the Middle East, where an olive oil-soaked piece of bread is dipped into. The quartet likes, in fact, to brew the flavours of its repertoire, since the firsts performances, around three axes : personal compositions, pieces from the classical repertoire (Henry Purcell, Franz Schuber, Richard Wagner…) that the band members re-adapt and open to improvisation, and compositions written by the italian cellist Giovanni Sollima, rearranged here for the four instruments of Zatar. This cocktail of Mediterranean rythms, popular melodies, chamber music and jazz-club music has already made the happiness of several venues.
It is with full enthusiasm for their project that Zatar will release their first album this coming winter 2015 on swiss label VDE-Gallo.