DROM

Drom, «the road», is also that which leads artists on tour and lovers of musical encounters through the world of popular cultures.
The aim of the organisation is to promote and transmit popular cultures of oral tradition and modal music.
Its activities are built around 3 axis : apprenticeship, artists accompaniment, and the coordination of a modal music network.
Erik Marchand : Singer and former clarinnetist in many groups, he is known to be one of the most famous creators of new breton music.
Between research and experimentation, he has participated in the promotion of the traditional world music : creation, production, assessment, workshops for the past 30 years.
Wishing to transmit his knowledge of modal music in breton creation, and being one of the rare specialists, he created « Kreiz Breizh Akademi », popular academy of modal music in Centre-Brittany in 2003.

Missions :

1) Vocational training programs

Kreiz Breizh Akademi
Since 2003, the professional training program Kreiz Breizh Akademi ( KBA) trains professional musicians.
KBA's specificity is that it rests on the tranmission of rules for the interpretation of modal music (scale, rhythm, variation) and on Breton popular music.
The language used in the sung forms is the Breton one in its local variants ( kan ha diskan and gwerzioù).
KBA takes place over three years : a theoretical training course of 12 months followed by 24 months of accompaniment in professional practice involving the production of a record and the realization of concerts, in partnership with La Grande Boutique and Innacor Records.

The main objectives of the training include :
- teaching of musical techniques based on the modal approach to music comprehension
- development of the trainee's composition-capacities, improvisation, arrangement-methods and orchestral play
- learning of stage and recording techniques

Erik Marchand is responsible for KBA's teaching. Masters of the whole world are invited in Brittany to work with the musicians :
Thierry Robin (France, India,…), Keyvan Chemirani (Iran, France), Danyel Waro (Réunion island), Mehdi Haddab (Algeria, France), Yair Dalal (Israel, Iraq), Spyros Halaris (Greece), Karim Ziad (Algeria, France), Fawaz Baker (Syria), Ibrahim Maalouf (Lebanon, France), Bojan Zulfikarpasic (Serbia, France), Rodolphe Burger (France), etc.

Master classes & training courses
Drom organises master classes all year long. Artists from all around the world intervene to transmit their skills and their culture: Djelimady Tounkara (Mali) / Mallakaster Vocal Ensemble (Albania) / Kudsi Ergüner (Turkey, France) / Les Musiciens du Nil (Egypt) / Koçani Orkestar (Macedonia), Svetlana Spajic (Serbia) Marta Sebestyen (Hungary), Bojan Z (Serbia), Driss El Maloumi (Morroco), Jasser Haj Youssef (Tunisia)...

The organisation also organises weel long musical training courses in Brittany and abroad in winter (Caransebeş-Romania 2011, Koçani-Macedonia 2012, Ayvalik Turkey 2014, Parvomay-Bulgaria 2015, Agadir-Morroco 2015, Rattvick Sweden 2017...)


Services
Organization of short or long training courses, master classes, conferences, educational interventions... Drom builds tailor-made programs according to your needs and objectives. Contact us!

2) Educational Projects

Drom organises musical projets in music schools, general schools and colleges to transmit skills and knowledge of popular traditions and modal musical expressions to children or teeneagers.

3) Modal music research network

It gathers musicians, composers, instrument makers, musicologists, researchers, teachers, etc. in various musical styles.
Beyond informal exchanges, they meet every two years in a musical symposium held by Drom in Brest (NoBorder Festival). They participate in conferences dealing with modal music and its impacts on contemporary musical creation.
The creation of such an event in Western Europe underlines the will to share musical experiences from various cultures and sectors.
Drom recently started the construction of a modal music portal for educational purposes with the support of European and regional fundings.
This project is built in the continuity of the work of Kreiz Breizh Akademi, a permanent workshop of creation and experiment feeding on reflections and on educational and musicological technical headways generated by the pole.