# Music by Genre > Jazz/Blues Variants, Bossa, Choro, Klezmer >  Melonious Quartet's new video : Gaucho

## Mandopolis

Hi there !

We just released a video of Melonious Quartet, hope you'll enjoy it !





Céline / Front de Libération de la Mandoline

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Andy Boden, 

Beanzy, 

Charles E., 

greg_tsam, 

Jim Adwell, 

roberto

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## mandrian

Beautifully shot video, beautiful instruments and above all beautiful music. Fantastic!

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## Will Patton

wow! Superbe!  The ensemble playing, the tonality of the instruments, the composition and the concept  - all incroyable.  Thanks for sharing.

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## brunello97

Thanks, Celine. That was a really enjoyable piece.

Mick

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## Dagger Gordon

Agreed.

One of my favourite groups.

What's happening with Mandopolis this year, Celine?

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## Jim Garber

That is great Céline. Thanks for posting. Is there a new CD coming out with this kind of music?

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## Fstpicker

Love how they pump the table for the bass beat. So technically efficient and cohesive. Wow! Lovely to listen to...easy on the ears. A refreshing change from the usual BG stuff mostly shown around here. 

Jeff

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## Dagger Gordon

I can never understand why they are not much better known.  They don't even seem to play out much, as far as I can make out from their website.

Gaucho is on the Au Sud De La Mandoline (1998) CD,

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## Don Stiernberg

Wonderful.

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## Jim Garber

> I can never understand why they are not much better known.  They don't even seem to play out much, as far as I can make out from their website.
> 
> Gaucho is on the Au Sud De La Mandoline (1998) CD,


Thanks, Dagger... hey, you found their website? I have not been able to.

It is also quite difficult to find their CDs here in North America. Céline, can you do something about that? They should just have it downloadable.

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## DSDarr

Beautiful! More please!

-David

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## Don Julin

Very cool!

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## Mandopolis

> Thanks, Dagger... hey, you found their website? I have not been able to.
> 
> It is also quite difficult to find their CDs here in North America. Céline, can you do something about that? They should just have it downloadable.


Hi Jim,

Unfortunatly, Meloniousquart.com is down due to a problem with our hosting (hate them !). But mandopolis.org is still available. We have a facebook too...

You can download "La miugrana" there : http://1d-paca.com/en/artist/melonious-quartet

Unfortunatly, the other CDs are out of print... We are planning to release a new one.

Regards,


Celine

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## Mandopolis

> Agreed.
> 
> One of my favourite groups.
> 
> What's happening with Mandopolis this year, Celine?


Hi Dagger !

Mandopolis Festival will be on 6/7/8 july, starting with "Parfum d'al Andalus", arabo-andalousian music.
On the 2nd day, we'll have Fabio Gallucci playing the duet Guarracino (napolitan songs), Sérénades including Gabriella Aiello, Pietro Cernuto (Italy) as singers, and the indian dancer Armelle Choquard, a dance with Tornamai, and on sunday, Sam Karpienia and the duet Claire Luzi / Cristiano Nascimento.

Regards !


Céline

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## Mo Soar

Picked this up on Amazon and love, love it! Particularly like the Gaucho video.

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## Jim Garber

> Unfortunatly, Meloniousquart.com is down due to a problem with our hosting (hate them !). But mandopolis.org is still available. We have a facebook too...


Maybe this is obvious, Céline, but maybe it is time to find another hosting service. There must be hundreds like here in the US. If you have problems with them, it is time to move on. Thanks, Mo Soar for the Amazon mention. I have the En Forme and La Miugrana and the Kepa Junkera one as well. Just need the "Sud" one. Amazon has it for download. Excellent!

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## Dan Hoover

yes..love it..very cool..

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## Mandopolis

> Maybe this is obvious, Céline, but maybe it is time to find another hosting service. There must be hundreds like here in the US. If you have problems with them, it is time to move on. Thanks, Mo Soar for the Amazon mention. I have the En Forme and La Miugrana and the Kepa Junkera one as well. Just need the "Sud" one. Amazon has it for download. Excellent!



Sure for the website, and in the meantime I will have it translated in english. 
I just need time...

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## Mandopolis

> Sure for the website, and in the meantime I will have it translated in english. 
> I just need time...



Website back online...

Just need the translation :-)

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## Dagger Gordon

I hope to go to their Mandopolis festival in early July. They are fantastic!

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## SincereCorgi

That was awesome, easily the best mandolin quartet video ever made.

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DSDarr

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## Dagger Gordon

Booked my flights to Nice!

Anyone else going?

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## Tom Sailor

really great! I love them...
Tom

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## pglasse

I'm not finding any information of this year's Mandopolis event. Is it really going on? Anyone have dates, lineup, info, or web page?

Thanks,

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## Dagger Gordon

It is on from 5-7 July, but I don't see anything on the internet either.

I don't think it is for me to make any announcements about the line-up etc, but I see no harm in saying that I will be giving a solo performance on Sunday &th at the Mandoworld Cafe and probably doing another set there on Saturday with an Indian mandolin player called Diptanshu Roy.

Dagger Gordon

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## Dagger Gordon

Here is the programme for this year's Mandopolis.

http://www.mandopolis.org/?p=1542

I'm really looking forward to seeing the Melonious Quartet.  

I see the man who makes their amazing instruments - Andre Sakeliarides - has a stand on Sunday. That'll be good.

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## kmmando

Terrific music and playing, hope the gigs go well, Dagger.

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## kmmando

What you taking - Sobell or Collings?

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## Dagger Gordon

Sobell. That's still what I mainly use for gigging, and I think it's better for solo things in particular.  The bass D comes in handy.

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## kmmando

yup, hard to beat the old Sobells, wonder how many he actually made?
cheers D, KHJM

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## Dagger Gordon

Mine sounds better than ever actually.   Just done my usual trick of applying clear nail varnish to the most scratched-up bits on the top. 

Plan to spend much of the evening playing it.  Fantastic weather in the North of Scotland.  Going to sit outside and think what I'm going to play at Mandopolis.  Better have some French wine to help my thought processes!

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## kmmando

Nice! Wish I could just drop round for a tune - its been years, sadly. Slainte!
Just found this, and was remembering Ian, so sad ....

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## Dagger Gordon

Bloody good. Really good recording actually.

I know you were sad when you did that, but hey- you'll need to try to smile a bit more when you're playing!  

Will never stop playing Ian Hardie's tunes. ( For those who don't know what we are talking about, we lost a mutual friend and fiddle player called Ian Hardie last October. He wrote a lot of really great tunes and was a great friend. It still sits heavily with us to have lost him so young).

Anyway, I'm getting in the groove out here enjoying the long Highland daylight hours, the French wine and my Sobell 10- string!

But gimme a shout when you're up in Achiltibuie. We MUST have a tune soon.

Slainte

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kmmando

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## kmmando

Everyone says that about my mug! My brain is fully occupied trying to play, and everything else gets left in stasis!
Yes, will be over at the Summer Isles Festival doing a set with Ali Beag and a session, should be fun. Shoogles are headlining it.
cheers! Kevin

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## Fester

Wow Kevin, that was beautiful.

Fester

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kmmando

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## kmmando

Thanks! But its a bit out of place in this thread .....

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## John Kelly

That's the beauty of threads, Kevin.  They can be unravelled!  Great recording and playing as always.

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kmmando

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## Dagger Gordon

The Sardinian mandola player Mauro Palmas will be at Mandopolis on Friday night.

He looks to be a pretty interesting musician. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4LyTor0Uq8

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## Michael Wolf

> The Sardinian mandola player Mauro Palmas will be at Mandopolis on Friday night.
> 
> He looks to be a pretty interesting musician.


Yes, he plays some wonderful music. I saw him live at Rudolstadt festival in 2010 together with the sardinian singer Elena Ledda.
Until June 13 you can hear the whole concert daily on the webchannel "Folk in Concert" of the german station "MDR-Figaro". They always have two shows online on a rotating basis. In the moment it´s "The Leningrad Cowboys" and Elena Ledda with Mauro Palmas.

Livestream: http://avw.mdr.de/livestreams/mdr_figaro_folk_128.m3u

Website: http://www.mdr.de/mdr-figaro/webchan...ikel57100.html

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## Joel Glassman

[duplicate deleted]

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## Joel Glassman

Beautiful 'telepathic' music on this video :^). I believe this is a choro tune also called Corta Jaca
by Chiquinha Gonzaga from about 1910

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## Dagger Gordon

Mandopolis starts tomorrow. Going to be just great.

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## mandrian

Dagger,

Be sure to post a report on how the recent festival worked out. I would like to visit it at some time in the future. Did you get a chance to try out the mandolins that the Melonius Quartet favour? They certainly look interesting although I've never seen one close at hand.

Regards

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## Dagger Gordon

Yes I had a great time.

Andre their luthier was there himself and I did have a chance to try his stuff out. Really quite different - bear in mind that he is primarily a violin maker.

The Melonious Quartet played a magnificent gig in the local hall where at one point they each played a new instrument made by Andre - ie  two new mandolins, a new mandola and a new mandocello.

There was some lovely music to be heard from Italy, Spain, India, Brazil and of course Scotland!  I'm pretty knackered just now but I will comment further on the festival later.

One point to make though: the festival is quite small and is free. That is entirely the charm of it and they don't seem to be interested in a big event at all. 
They are therefore almost entirely dependent on local government funding and obviously in these straitened times it is by no means certain how long the festival will continue.

So I'm really happy to have had the chance to go. I think that The Melonious Quartet are absolutely fantastic. Incredibly subtle and beautiful music played with tremendous virtuosity on wonderful instruments. It is beyond me why they are not much better known - although it is true that their presence on the web is frustratingly small which may be part of it.

A wonderful weekend.  There were some other lovely performances of which more later, and some really nice people to spend time with.

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mandrian

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## Mandopolis

> Yes I had a great time.
> 
> Andre their luthier was there himself and I did have a chance to try his stuff out. Really quite different - bear in mind that he is primarily a violin maker.
> 
> The Melonious Quartet played a magnificent gig in the local hall where at one point they each played a new instrument made by Andre - ie  two new mandolins, a new mandola and a new mandocello.
> 
> There was some lovely music to be heard from Italy, Spain, India, Brazil and of course Scotland!  I'm pretty knackered just now but I will comment further on the festival later.
> 
> One point to make though: the festival is quite small and is free. That is entirely the charm of it and they don't seem to be interested in a big event at all. 
> ...



Hi Dagger,

Nice reading this report...
You just need to come back one more time to see what the Serenades look like in their real environment...

It's true that we don't want the Mandopolis Festival to grow bigger and bigger. 
Not only because it's hard to raise funding... But mainly because we want the festival to fit the place, and Puget-Théniers is not a place for a big event. And we want to be different, and that's why people come there. (Puget-Théniers is about 1 hour from Nice in the mountains...).
We want it better and better, we don't need stars or mandolin heroes, we want to offer high quality in great places with a great sound...

And we don't know how long it will last !

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## greg_tsam

Bang the drum slowly, boys.  Great stuff.

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## Dagger Gordon

Diptanshu Roy has some good Mandoplis pix on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/diptanshu.r...8032467&type=3

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## kmmando

Fascinating stuff - some fine instruments there and so nice to see everything outdoors.

Happy to have a wee friday gathering in Springwell the day before the festival.

KHJM

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## Dagger Gordon

A wee clip has emerged of what happens when a Scotsman, an Indian and (near the end!) a Frenchman have a jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=A1eKkYY0KhY

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DSDarr, 

mandrian

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## M.Marmot

All this just makes me more determined to try and get there next year - especially now that i'm based not so far away.

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