15.11.2021, by Luca Testoni

The recording of the first “Still Moving” live performance by Mauro Durante and Justin Adams, filmed at Real World Studios, is finally available online.

The recording of the first “Still Moving” live performance by Mauro Durante and Justin Adams, filmed at Real World Studios, is finally available online.

A truly unique duo, the one created by “our” Mauro Durante, the frontman, singer, violinist and drummer of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino and a legend of national folk music, together with Justin Adams, known as the guitarist and Sensational Space Shifters right-hand man of former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, but also as the producer of some of the most interesting world music artists of the past few years (ever heard of Tinariwen?).

It is made unique by the quality of music played by the two virtuosos, in which the traditions of Southern Italy (taranta and pizzica, among others) ideally have the same “right to speak” as African and North-American blues. Both influences echo through their debut album “Still Moving”, released this past October 29th by Ponderosa Music Records with the support of Puglia Sounds Records. The duo is made all the more unique by the fact that Durante and Adams had a chance to document their very first live performance in the best possible way. Their live performance of the album’s 11 tracks, recorded on October 22nd 2020, in the “big room” of Peter Gabriel’s legendary Real World Studios in the rural town of Box, near Bath, in England, was filmed by Mark Lewis and Thomas Dibb of Northern Cowboy Film and is now fully available on YouTube and on the duo’s Facebook page. The recording was made possible with support from British Underground and Puglia Sounds, and financed by Arts Council England. The Real World Studios concert, by the way, was supposed to take place only a few days before the duo’s (virtual) appearance at the Womex 2020 festival.

Mauro Durante, who met Justin Adams about ten years ago, on the occasion of a Notte della Taranta festival featuring Ludovico Einaudi as a conductor, cannot hide how pleased he is with the accolades “Still Moving” is receiving from the international press: «I’m proud of how our record has been universally appreciated. It cannot be ascribed to a precise genre, and even to call it “world music” would be reductive. It is the result of real friendship, even before musical affinity», he explains. «The best thing is how we both come from different musical experiences, from an abundance of instruments and sounds where all frequencies are occupied. In this case, however, we chose a more intimate dimension. More than that, a more essential one. What a pleasure it was to be able to tell single sounds apart…».

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