The duo Naragonia and Simone Bottasso in concert in the Batavierhuis, Rotterdam
On 27 June 2020, the Belgian duo Naragonia and the Italian Simone Bottasso performed together in het Batavierhuis in Rotterdam. Pascale Rubens and Toon Van Mierlo make up the duo Naragonia. As from 2003, they have been playing together, and together they have contributed to the renewal of the Folk Music scene in Dutch-speaking Belgium. They have composed lots of new music, based on Flemish and French traditional music. They are both multi-instrumentalists: Pascale plays accordion, violin and she also sings, and Toon plays accordion, soprano saxophone and bagpipe. Furthermore, Toon is a fervent collector of bagpipes. The duo often performs at balfolk events. They also play with the Naragonia Quartet, with which they have meanwhile released their third CD Mira on the well-known Belgian label Home Records.
Simone organized a small series of concerts in the Batavierhuis, Rotterdam: –Bottasso invites – of which this concert forms a part. In Acoustic Roots he tells about this project: In Dutch
About the concert with Naragonia, Simone says the following: “I was supposed to meet Naragonia for a workshop and a concert in Belgium, but this got canceled a few days before. Since the COVID restrictions in the Netherlands are lighter, we thought of meeting in Batavierhuis to play a last-minute concert together.”
Simone Bottasso has been playing the diatonic accordion since he was 8 years old. He studied Occitanian and Italian traditional music, and he studied with Riccardo Tesi, Norbert Pignol, Marc Perrone and Silvio Peron. In 2012, he graduated with the classical flute, and in 2013, he finished his studies of jazz at the Conservatorio G. Verdi di Torino (Turin). Then he moved to Rotterdam to study jazz, contemporary and electronic composition at the Codarts Conservatorium with the teachers Paul Van Brugge and René Uijlenhoet.
