Nevà Quartet

The Nevà Quartet is made up by Dimitri Psonis on the Santur, Politiki Lyra, Oud, Saz; Alessandro Darsinòs on Percussion; Nicola Segatta on Cello and John Diamanti Fox on Clarinet. The project "Da Greco a Levante" - From Greece to the East - is inspired by the expression Marco Polo used to indicate, with the names of the two winds, the route from the North-East to the East, and traces a path that intimately links two apparently distant worlds. The "Neva Makami" is one of the most famous melodic sequences of the classical Ottoman tradition, which together with the Arab, Byzantine and Persian traditions, is the repository of an immense musical heritage that still today sounds mysterious and arcane to the Western ear.

The Quartet is formed musicians who trained in the field of European classical music and musicians who studied and favour Middle Eastern music. Ambassadors of different worlds who meet to reinterpret traditional pieces from the Balkan, Ottoman and Greek areas, and contribute, with their musical experience, to the search for points of contact through precious and characterising differences.

Dimitri Psonis, trained in Athens studying guitar, but soon turned to bouzouki and traditional Greek ‘Rebetiko’ music, continuing with Santouri and Composition. In 1984 he settled in Madrid where he studied percussion at the ‘Real Conservatorio Superior de Música’ and Orff pedagogy, obtaining the relevant diplomas with top marks.
He continued his studies in Amsterdam and specialised in contemporary percussion.

He studied composition with Iannis Xenakis and vibraphone with Gary Burton.

He founded the Marimba Trio ‘Acroma’, the Percussion Quartet ‘Krusta’ and the Contemporary Music Sextet ‘P'An-Ku’. He taught percussion, was actively involved in musical education for children and held seminars for teachers. In 1995 he returned to oriental music and founded the group ‘Metamorphosis’, recording a CD of the same name that won the Goldberg Prize. He has held numerous seminars on ‘makam and usul’ and the organisation of oriental modal music and rhythms.

For over ten years he has collaborated with Khaled Arman and his Kabul Ensemble, with the Netherlands Blazers Ensemble of Amsterdam, with the Catalan singer Maria Del Mar Bonet, with the jazz musician Javier Paxarino, with the folk musician Eliseo Parra.
He has participated in the production of Hollywood films such as ‘Exodus’ by Ridley Scott, ‘Buried’ by Rodrigo Cortés, ‘Risen’ by Kevin Reynolds and as a soloist in ‘The Kite Runner’ by Alberto Iglesias by Marc Foster, a soundtrack nominated for Oscar and Golden Globes in 2007.

He currently collaborates with Jordi Savall in the Hesperion XXI Ensemble.
Dimitri Psonis is an Artist Ambassador of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation. He is a teacher in the Orpheus XXI project of Creative Europe European Union, which aims to enable the integration of professional refugee musicians and to share their culture with children and young people.
In 2020 he directed and played on the CD published by Alia Vox: ‘Synergia’, music and songs from the island of Cyprus, winning the ‘German Critics’ Award’.

Alessandro Darsinòs, was born in Brescia to an Italian mother and a Greek father. He specialises in Mediterranean percussion instruments such as frame drums, goblet drums and idiophones, and has trained with renowned masters such as Zohar Fresco, Glen Velez, Andrea Piccioni, Aleix Tobias and Vangelis Karipis.

He also participated in and eventually organised the Frame Drums Italia Master Course, as well as attending the frame drum course at the Department of Traditional Music of the P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

He specialises in the repertoires of the Balkan (Greek, Bulgarian and northern Macedonian) and Middle Eastern (Ottoman and classical Arabic) traditions and plays with various ensembles and projects, accompanying internationally renowned musicians such as Harris Lambrakis, Kyriakos Gouventas, Dimitris Psonis and Kudsi Ergüner with the Bîrün Ensemble.

As a member of La Piccola Orchestra Lumière based in Trento, he contributes to the recordings and performances of the Trentino composer Nicola Segatta, such as Ikone, Concerto Bizantino with the cellist Giovanni Sollima, Concerto per un'Eclissi with the participation of the freeclimber Manolo, il Mare. He was a member of the Parad-ice Orchestra, where he played ice percussion in an igloo located in the Trentino Alps. For the last 12 years he has combined musical projects with environmental protection. He grows olive trees in Greece and produces extra virgin olive oil.

Nicola Segatta is a composer, cellist and luthier who lives in the mountains of Trentino. He studied cello with Rocco Filippini, Marco Decimo, Enrico Bronzi and Giovanni Sollima. He graduated from the Antonio Stradivari School in Cremona as a luthier. Since 2011 he has been performing with La Piccola Orchestra Lumière and composing chamber music, songs, soundtracks for cinema and silent films, radio dramas, music for theatre, circus, dance and ice instruments. His performances have been broadcast on the radio by Rairadio3, RSI 2 and ORF, and on television by Rai5 and CBS Shanghai. His videos are distributed globally by Stingray Classica. His works have been performed in prestigious venues such as Phoenix Hall in Osaka, the Konzerthaus in Vienna and, for a Deutsche Grammophon production, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. He has released three albums: Shakespeare for Dreamers (Visage, Squilibri 2017), the oratorio Ikone (Quadrivium, Squilibri 2020) and Concerto Bizantino for cello and orchestra (Quadrivium, Sonzogno 2020).

Nicola has collaborated with various artists, including Giovanni Sollima, Monika Leskovar, Geoff Westley, Roby Lakatos, Collegium Musicale Estonia, Marcello Fera and Duo Valla Scurati, Avi Avital and Ensemble Between Worlds, Circo el Grito, the Wu Ming2 collective, sound designer Philippe Gozlan, director Marco Alotto and directors Mali Weil, Jan Zaruba and Jan Šimánek. He is currently working on a new album with the Corsican group A Filetta. As a collaborator of the American artist Tim Linhart, he built and played an ice cello in an igloo located on the Presena glacier at an altitude of 2700 metres, as director of the Parad-ice Orchestra.
He plays a cello of his own construction.

John Diamanti-Fox, a clarinettist from London, regularly performs with Orchestra Milano Classica both as a soloist and as a principal member, and with La Piccola Orchestra Lumière, of which he is co-founder. He has played for prestigious institutions such as the Konzerthaus in Vienna, St John's Smith Square Concert Hall in London, the Auditorium Cariplo in Milan, the hall of the Società Filarmonica in Trento, the IBM Studios, Teatro alla Scala in Milan and at important festivals such as the Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, the Biennale in Venice, the Accademia Filarmonica in Rome, Suoni delle Dolomiti, the Igry s Klassikoy Festival in St. Petersburg, Luiss University in Rome and the International Festival in Ferrara.

He has collaborated with the Indaco Quartet and the pianist Francesco Maria Moncher, among others, and has recorded the album ‘Shakespeare for Dreamers’, published by Squilibri Editore, with original music by Nicola Segatta, with an ensemble that includes the cellists Giovanni Sollima and Monika Leskovar. His collaborations also include Music Academy International, the chamber orchestra ‘L'Offerta Musicale di Venezia’, I Virtuosi Italiani, Ensemble Zandonai, the J. Futura Orchestra, the Haydn Orchestra of Trento and Bolzano and the ‘Spira Mirabilis’ Orchestra.