Category: THE OTHER CLASSICS

A project by Simone Menezes with photos by Sebastião Salgado  

Sebastião Salgado, world-renowned photographer and winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, has impressively documented over decades how closely the beauty and fragility of our planet are linked. His focus on the Amazon rainforest in particular shows the unrivalled natural power of this habitat, but also the threats to which it is exposed. Together with the Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes, Salgado has created an extraordinary project that combines his moving photographs with the music of his Brazilian compatriot Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Salgado had just published his exhibition Amazonia, while Menezes was working on Villa-Lobos’ Floresta do Amazonas. She created a 45-minute suite for orchestra and soprano, for which Salgado selected over 200 photographs inspired by Villa-Lobos. The concert also includes Bachianas Brasileiras 4 and Philip Glass‘ Aguas da Amazonia, creating an extraordinary event with Salgado’s images and Villa-Lobos’ music.

Since then, the concerto has been programmed and performed with great success by more than 12 orchestras around the world: Barbican Centre, Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Zurich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Bordeaux, Orquesta Nacional de España and many others. It will also be performed in 2024 by Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Liceo Barcelona and the hr-Sinfonieorchester. The concert was recorded live and has been released on CD by the Alpha label in 2023.

This concert, whose dramaturgy centres on the beauty and fragility of the Amazon rainforest, is more than just a performance. It is an appeal to humanity to protect our environment and a tribute to the unspoilt landscapes that Salgado has been photographing for decades.

Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado was a Brazilian photographer who was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1944. He began his career in Paris in 1973 and worked as a professional photographer for photo agencies until 1994, when he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado founded the agency Amazonas Images, which focuses exclusively on his work.

Salgado has travelled to more than 100 countries for his photo projects. His work has been published in numerous magazines and books, including Other Americas (1986), Sahel: L’homme en détresse (1986), Sahel: el fin del camino (1988), An Uncertain Grace (1990), Workers (1993), Terra (1997), Migrations and Portraits (2000), Africa (2007), Genesis (2013), The Scent of a Dream (2015), Kuwait, a Desert on Fire (2016) and Gold, Serra Pelada Gold Mine (2019). Lélia Wanick Salgado conceived, designed and edited each of his books and curated most of the travelling exhibitions of his work that have been shown in museums and galleries worldwide.

Sebastião Salgado passed away unexpectedly in May 2025. Our deepest condolences go out to his family, his friends, and the artists connected to him.

Simone Menezes

Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes is a visionary musician renowned for her creativity and innovative spirit, whether as founder and artistic director of Ensemble K, or as guest conductor with the world’s leading orchestras. Simone Menezes has conducted orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zurich Philharmonia, London Philharmonia, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Orchestra Santa Cecilia, the Britten Sinfonia, São Paulo Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra, Osaka Symphony Orchestra, as well as at the Philharmonie de Paris. She has recorded three albums and premiered over 20 works.

Our offer:

We offer a unique concert project, ideal for orchestras and event organisers seeking artistic excellence. The package includes:

– the acclaimed conductor Simone Menezes,
– the outstanding soprano Camila Titinger,
– as well as exclusive photo rights to include his Amazônia series.

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Babylon ORCHESTRA, founded in 2016, is a Berlin-based urban fusion ensemble that combines European and Middle Eastern music with the sound of a big band and contemporary orchestra. Our aim is to promote intercultural artistic cooperation and thus to give different musical traditions and cultures a place in a new shared and unique sound world of the present. We bring people with their stories, songs, instruments, rhythms in the hope of providing creative impulses for new musical works.

By combining and juxtaposing classical and traditional instruments, such as oud and guitar, ney and flute, kamanche and violin, or other exciting combinations, we also aim to foster a deeper understanding of non-European cultures.

The orchestra also sees itself as a platform for exceptional musicians who do not want to squeeze their art into classical or popular musical forms and instead want to find an expression for the specificity of their countries of origin.

In 2021, the ensemble performed with the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Berlin, the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Office of the German Federal President, the Konzerthaus Berlin and the ODEON Göppingen, among others. In 2022, the ensemble performs in Greece and at several German festivals, releases an EP and makes its debut in Switzerland.

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Aga Khan Music Programme was established by Karim Aga Khan with the aim of supporting outstanding musicians and music teachers in preserving and communicating their musical heritage, developing it in contemporary forms and disseminating it worldwide through concerts and recordings. The programme initiates and implements country-specific action programmes to support the revitalisation and preservation of cultural heritage. Under this premise, special programme series in which outstanding renowned artists present new compositions, improvisations and arrangements of a repertoire strongly inspired by the respective tradition are developed, among other things. The programmes always represent artistic encounters between time-honoured traditions and contemporary forms, as a new generation of top-class musicians further develops and varies old musical traditions. The encounter of different cultures thus gives rise to a unique musical creativity.

The Aga Khan Music Programme strives with top-class musicians from the Near and Far East, Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union to preserve the rich and varied heritage of classical music traditions from around the world and introduce them in Europe. From 15th to 17th February 2019, the Aga Khan Music Programme visited Germany for the first time, presenting the multi-faceted classical music of the Silk Road in four concerts at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, including a school concert. Renowned musicians, such as the Chinese pipa player Wu Ma, the Syrian composer and musician Basel Rajoub or Dutar and tanbur player Sirojiddin Juraev, combined music traditions of their countries with improvisation and borrowings from the Western jazz tradition in their performances. The multimedia concert Qyrq Qyz – Forty Girls reflected both musically and figuratively a centuries-old saga of Central Asia that could possibly change the Western view of women’s images of the East.

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