Faith Ristic: The Open Fund for Music Creators
The UK / Serbian Romani duo met in 2009 in the village of Gornja Grabovica, Serbia. Since the release of their first album, they have built a large national and international following. The Serbian Film sponsored documentary ‘Faith i Branko’ is premiering at Sheffield Doc Fest in October 2020, and they have been selected as ‘Roma Ambassadors’ for the 300,000 capacity Roma ‘Sabor Violinista’ Festival in Serbia in 2021. They recently completed a 42 venue tour of Australia including the 10,000 capacity Port Fairy Main Stage; in 2019 they featured with John McLaughlin in ‘The Rough Guide to World Jazz, The Rough Guide to Eastern European Music and were placed in the top 10 European World Music Albums. They have featured in The Guardian Weekend Magazine, and radio play includes BBC Radio 3 Live Sessions, World Service with Stephen Fry and ABC Sydney. They have performed at venues such as The Royal Festival Hall, Guca Festival, Australia National Folk Festival and Glastonbury and are currently working at Emir Kusturica’s studios with members of the No Smoking Orchestra.
This funding shall support the creation and musician costs to record 5 tracks to complete ‘Faith i Branko’ next album release with ‘isolated’ artists, and for live broadcast streams to support the online album release. It will enable them to find innovative ways of creating and recording new music remotely in collaboration, to connect with 3 UK based artists and selected Romani musicians and to explore new sounds and compositional methods.