Piers Faccini

Piers Faccini’s latest album, "I Dreamed An Island", is the personal quest of a British songwriter living in southern France - a voyage towards an imagined haven through the storms of fear and intolerance brewing around the world.

Singing mostly in English but also in French, Italian dialects and Arabic, Faccini’s music is an impassioned celebration of cultural diversity and pluralism. Searching for a bygone golden era when coexistence and religious tolerance once prevailed, Faccini found a model for this utopian haven in 12th Century Sicily.

At the crossroads of Western, Arabic and Byzantine influence, the island briefly flourished as the most enlightened and advanced society in medieval Europe. Raised in a trilingual family environment in the 70s and 80s in France, Italy and the UK, the album also reflects Faccini’s own background.

For this concert, Faccini will be joined by Malik Ziad, an Algerian musician who sings and plays guembri lute as well as Algerian mandole.