We are D'Takito Jam

D'Takito Jam is an artists collective involved in the practice of musical decolonization. Transcultural dialog, diversity and the empowerment of disregarded composers, genres, genders and musical phenomenons are key components of the collective’s artistic attitude. Their arrangements and original interpretations of tango and new tango, milonga, latin-jazz, candombe, zamba, huayno, baião, go hand in hand with reinterpretations and recompositions of classical, romantic, and avant-garde european and non-european academic music. Having musical excursions also in Middle Eastern currents such as Armenian ethno-jazz, Arabic and Kurdish music, D'Takito Jam plays beyond the limits of all such genres, bringing out the power of transculturality through ethnomusicological research and improvisation.

Gervasio Tarragona Valli and Sergio Escalera Soria began the core of the ensemble. They met in 2011 as members of the Orchestra of the Americas (artistic advisors: Gustavo Dudamel and Plácido Domingo, conductor: Carlos Miguel Prieto) during their tour in Mexico with Mariachi Vargas. Subsequently, the two musicians met again in Armenia in 2018, an encounter that gave birth to D'Takito JamDuo. Coming from the soundscapes of bucolic Uruguay and the Bolivian Andes plateaux, their musical offering at the clarinet and piano expand to other wind instruments such as the saxophone or electric aerophone, diverse keyboard instruments and percussion. The duo formation has performed at the BuGa Festival - Erfurt, the Fredener MusikTage Festival in Germany, and won prizes at competitions such as the “Verfemte Musik Wettbewerb” in Schwerin (Germany), the “Astor Piazzolla Competition” on the composer's 100th birthday, the “Gran Premi Musical Lauredià” (Andorra), and more recently at the Wolfgang Meyer Award in Karlsruhe, where they received the second prize of the jury and the Audience Award.

They group has performed extensively in concert halls across Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Italy, France, Uruguay, Bolivia and Armenia, but also at unconventional venues and outreach projects such as the “Música para respirar 24/7” for Latin-American audiences, Musik Gegen Rassismus in the streets of Weimar. Among their collaborators are artists such as the flutist Santiago Acosta, the beatboxer Crobbs, the dudukist Harutyun Chkolyan, the violinists Astghik Vardanyan, Leandro Falconi, Betina Chaves and Julius Maier, the cellists Levon Arakelyan, Karina Núñez and Karima Albrecht, clarinetists Narek Atoyan, Angela Kovac and Charlotte Strauch, the trumpetist Tadeo Fisser, the guitarist Martín Tarragona Valli, the Armenian String Quartet, the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, and they have recently premiered on tour with Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra and with the Bolivia-Clasica Orchestra, their first orchestral composition “D’Takito Suite” as well as their own arrangements for orchestra.

  Photo: Felipe Cuartas

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay into a musical family, Gervasio Tarragona Valli was recruited in his teenage by bandoneonist Raul Jaurena for his Destaoriya Tango Orchestra and joined the Montevideo Swing Jazz Quintet. His Japanese solo debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra followed in 2017 as the first prize winner of the Tokyo Music Competition. He performed as soloist with New Japan Philharmonic, Japan Century Orchestra, Haydn Kammerorchester Bozen, Russische Kammerphilharmonie St. Petersburg, the Chamber Orchestra of Bogotá, the State Philharmonic of Transylvania, the Busan Philharmonic, the State Symphony Orchestra of Armenia and the National Orchestra of Uruguay. Gervasio has also collaborated as an orchestral musician with the Hyogo PAC Orchestra in Japan, the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand, the Biel-Bienne Orchestra in Switzerland, the Thüringen Symphony Orchestra the WDR Funkhaus Orchester and the Würth Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany. He received first prizes at the Cluj Music Competition, the Japan Woodwind Competition, the Saverio Mercadante Clarinet Competition, the Sava Dimitrov Competition and other awards at the Dimitri Ashkenazy Competition, the ClassicWinds Hamburg Competition, the Janacek Music Competition, was semifinalist at the Concours de Geneve and the Beijing Music Competition and was winner the Oskar Rieding Composition Competition in Slovenia and the National Prize for Composition of Uruguay. He studied at the Universities of Music in Basel, Geneva, Saarbrucken and Weimar. In the academic year 2019/20 he taught clarinet, saxophone and chamber music at the Edward Said National Conservatory in Palestine. In early 2022 he taught children from extreme social backgrounds as part of the Kinder Paradise project in Ghana. He currently teaches at various music schools in North-Westphalia. He was invited to various festivals such as Jeju International Wind Festival, Davos Music Festival, Bethlehem Christmas Festival, Klangrausch Weimar, Patagonia Clarinet Festival, Settimana Mozartiana di Rovereto, Ludwigsburg Street Music Festival. Gervasio has performed with musicians such as Hugo Fattoruso, Nils Vogram, Phil Donkin, Peter Eötvös, Sir Neville Marriner, Yutaka Sado, Dmitry Kitajenko, Nemanja Radulovic, Lise de La Salle, Jens Lindemann and Alicia Sara Ott.

Born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Sergio Escalera Soria has played in major Latin-American concert halls: Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Sala Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Teatro del Lago in Chile, National Theater of Lima, Teatro Castro Alves of Salvador, etc. After his debut recital in Lugano at the Progetto Martha Argerich 2016 acclaimed by French magazine “Diapason”, he continues his career as soloist, chamber musician and composer/arranger in different continents. As a top prize winner of the III Frédéric Chopin Competition of Latin America and the Claudio Arrau Competition in Chile, he has performed as a soloist with the Franz Liszt Academy Orchestra, the Youth Orchestra of Bahia-Brazil, the Bolivia Clásica Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of Entre Ríos, the Tucuman Symphony Orchestra, the Abakan Philharmonic of Russia, the OSUL Orchestra of Lausanne, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Montevideo Philharmonic, the Puebla State Symphony. He was awarded the First Prize by the Max Jost Foundation in Switzerland, the Nives Caetani Buzzai Prize in Italy and the First Absolute Prize at the Ars Nova competition in Trieste. His most important mentors are Ricardo Castro, Jorge Luis Prats, Michael Lewin, Ana María Vera, Sergei Babayan, Nadia Lapitch, William Chapman Nyaho, Igor Cognolato. He recently taught at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Palestine and was Artist in Residence at the UWC Dilijan College in Armenia, leading music activities and performing in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia. Founding member of the Bolivian Chamber Music Society, he co-leads the Música para Respirar International Festival in Sucre, Bolivia. He currently resides in Lisbon, Portugal.