Pour les Amis 

A series of events in cooperation with the City of Mannheim and the Oriental Music Academy 

...communicate through their passion..

What if musicians from different origins, with completely different backgrounds, met and started making music without knowing each other or having heard of each other before? What if people communicated only through their passion? What would come out of it? These and other questions are what the project "Pour les Amis" explores.

The concert series “Pour les Amis” is a project by Santino Scavelli in cooperation with the City of Mannheim and the “Oriental Music Academy Mannheim”. The percussionist of Italian origin invites renowned artists from the world music scene for an entire weekend to Mannheim. They bring their compositions, which they perform together with surprise guests from Mannheim's jazz, world music, popular music, and classical music scenes in a one-hour concert on Sunday evening.

..serves as a platform for musicians from various Mannheim institutions..

The name “Pour les Amis” describes an approach that goes far beyond a professional world music meeting. We create a safe space for people who trust each other artistically. We bring together musicians from Mannheim's world music scene to pursue new musical impulses. Each event invites a renowned guest musician who, over a weekend, works on their compositions with musicians from the metropolitan region and Mannheim's universities, presenting them in a concert. A kind of "open stage" that serves as a platform for musicians from various Mannheim institutions as well as for invited guests who want to get to know the Mannheim network better. The statement "For the Friends" represents a commitment to interpersonal relationships. We want to create a breeding ground for friendship in an artistic context through a format that symbolizes the mechanisms of social coexistence. Through this intimacy of the process, we get closer to the essence of world music than other formats.

Some artists who have been our guests:

  • Ceyda Pirali (TUR)
  • Gregory Dargent (FR)
  • Annette Maye (DE)
  • Arezoo Rezvani (IRN)
  • Max Clouth (DE)
  • etc..