Voice & Cello: Nesrine Belmokh
Cello: Matthieu Saglio
Percussion: David Gadea
Three international musicians who joined their talents while living by the Mediterranean Sea in Valencia, Spain. Nesrine Belmokh, a French-Algerian singer/cellist who had worked with legendary conductors such as Lorin Maazel and Daniel Barenboim, and performed with Cirque du Soleil on international tours, Matthieu Saglio, a French cellist ‘with a thousand tone colours’ who has performed in more than 30 countries and David Gadea, a Spanish well rounded percussionist who was already touring with Flamenco and Jazz greats, personify the essence of NES. Their sound has been shaped by the richness and background of their lives and musical experiences, ranging from jazz to classical, soul and Arabic traditional music.
Their first album, Ahlam, recorded and mixed at the renown French studio La Buissonne, contains songs in english, arabic and french, full of grace and emotion and nurtured by the magic chemistry that emerges from their creative minds. The album is named after one of the songs, ‘Ahlam’, which means ‘dream’ in Arabic. It expresses a personal dream of love fulfilled and of the desire for peace in the world. “There is no beauty without a concept of goodness” (translated excerpt from the song’s chorus).
The album was released in august 2018 with the legendary record label ACT and was critically acclaimed: “One of the albums of the year” (The London Times), “An immediate charmfull album” (Le Monde), “A name to watch” (The Evening Standard), “Ingeniously quirky Arab-Andalusian inventions from a highly original band” (Songlines), “The time of NES has come” (Deutschlandfunk), etc.
In September 2018 they premiere their album in Germany at the Berlin Philharmonic. Their upcoming European tour will include performances in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Romania.