Skopje, 24 January 2025 (MIA) — Dzhijan Emin will conduct Saturday the Luxembourg Philharmonic in a concert of works by J. S. Bach and contemporary pieces featuring pianist Francesco Tristano as soloist.

The concert program includes Bach's "Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052" and original works by Emin and Tristano, complemented by sound effects based on electronic music.

Emin's Luxembourg concert follows his performance at the Portuguese Guimarães Jazz Festival, which he closed with a concert of original music conducting the Guimarães Symphony Orchestra. 

Born in Skopje, Emin is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer, known for his work as the principal french horn of the Macedonian Philharmonic; composing experimental music as well as theater play and film scores; directing orchestras and large ensembles; playing guitar or keyboards with rock groups; and producing and art directing music festivals. 

His collaborators have included musicians such as Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mils, Francesco Tristano as well as Oscar and Grammy winning artists like A.R. Rahman, Kurt Elling, Frank London, Malcolm Burn, Luis Bonnila, William Parker, Bob Stewart, Francesco Bearzzatti, Luca Aquino, Gianluca Petrella, Peter Herbert, Damo Suzuki, Air, Gloria Estefan, Rico The Wizard (Daft Punk), Rambo Amadeus, Darko Rundek, Kiril Dzhajkovski, Arhangel, Femi Kuti & The Positive Force, Vlatko Stefanovski, and others.

He has conducted and performed his works with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Parisian Orchestra Lamoureux, the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Régional de Cannes, the Georgian National Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Lorraine, and the Belgrade Symphony Orchestra. 

He is the chief conductor of the National Jazz Orchestra, after being part of many orchestras including the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, No Borders Orchestra, East West World Orchestra, and F.A.M.E.S. Orchestra. 

While at Juilliard, Francesco Tristano laid the groundwork of his ambitions as an interpreter of Bach’s music: he played and recorded the Piano Concertos with his ensemble The New Bach Players, as well as recording the Goldberg Variations (found on the small Accord label) on his own. 

Shortly after, he was signed by the French label Infiné, where he released his first records blending electronica and piano: "Not for Piano" (2007), where he created versions of techno anthems like Jeff Mills’ The Bells or Derrick May’s Strings of Life on the piano; "Auricle Bio On" (2008), where the piano is conceived as a sampler; and "Idiosynkrasia" (2010), in which he seamlessly joined his virtuosity on the keys and his programming prowess, refining his concept of “Piano 2.0,” where the instrument reaches a new textural iteration through the use of computers. 

Tristano’s big leap took place in 2011, when he was signed by Deutsche Grammophon, with whom he recorded three programmes inspired by his ascent as a concert pianist of international acclaim. The first one was "Bach/Cage" (2011) – an exploration of the sonic space where Johann Sebastian Bach and John Cage’s music co-existed despite a distance of three centuries: the punctuation of emotion, the search for unusual textures, the surprising quality of the serendipitous.

A year later, he returned to "Bach on Long Walk" (2012), in which the anecdote of the young composer making a 300km-long journey on foot to meet the Danish organist Dietricht Buxtehude served as an excuse to unearth forgotten pieces by Buxtehude and play them on the piano for the first time in history. 

Third record for Deutsche Grammophon, "Scandale" (2014), which he recorded with Alice Sara Ott, was based on piano renditions of pieces composed by Maurice Ravel, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Igor Stravinsky for Sergei Diághilev’s legendary (and some might say controversial) Russian ballets. 

The Luxembourg Philharmonic was founded in 1933 as part of the broadcasting activities of Radio Luxembourg (RTL) and has been publicly administered since 1996. 

In 2005 it took up residence at the Philharmonie Luxembourg with which it forms one legal body since 2012. Its 99 musicians from 25 nations are led by Gustavo Gimeno. His predecessors were Henri Pensis, Carl Melles, Louis de Froment, Leopold Hager (appointed honorary conductor in 2021), David Shallon, Bramwell Tovey and Emmanuel Krivine.

The Luxembourg Philharmonic is subsidized by the Grand Duchy’s Ministry of Culture and supported financially by the City of Luxembourg. The orchestra is sponsored by the Banque de Luxembourg, BGL BNP Paribas and Mercedes-Benz. mr/