Safri Duo

Release date

01 January 1970

If you are interested in booking Safri Duo, please contact one of our agents: info@international-artists.com

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The surprise was immense when the high esteemed classical musicians from the internationally acknowledged
percussion duo, Safri Duo, in 2000 came out as percussive pop musicians with focus attention towards the dance-
and club environment.

Half a dozen big hits and two albums with global sales figures in millions later, the two percussion players,
composers, producers and programmers, Uffe Savery and Morten Friis, are yet again prepared to cause surprise.
Nothing would have been more easy to compose and record a number three in the same style, but as deep
professional musicians constantly new challenges are their nutrition, and therefore the field is chalked to yet a
new, and at least as big, astonishment.

In many ways the album “Origins” is the third chapter in this 20 year old history of Safri Duo. The two musicians
haven’t made a clean cut to the past, and they don’t intend to mask their musical origin.
Quite the contrary, Origins is an album, in commune with the multiple meanings, which draw clear lines to the first
two chapters, where Uffe and Morten as respectively classical percussionists and hard-hitting pop musicians
appealed to poles apart different kind of audiences.

But “Origins” is more than a concentrate of the past. It’s indeed the sound of something new and surprising. It’s
Italian opera, African choir singing, European real world and Danish trash metal! Ten new tracks, which points in
different directions, but bounded together with a glowing warm and filmic mood. This is very obvious in the track
Twilight, which is the first single of the album, which also was the track that could point out the direction of Origins.
Pretty surprisingly, especially seen in the light of that it originally was composed as a 2nd movement to a clarinet
concerto! On the other hand, with Safri Duo anything can happen!

It was in the summer 2007, and the duo was starting thinking about their new album, when the outline of Twilight
started to take shape. The clash between the clarinet and the marimba gave vague African associations, and when
Uffe, Morten and their A&R Matt Chalk suddenly could hear for their inner ears the sound of Youssou N’Dours
voice, there was only one thing to do: To get in contact with the popular singer from Senegal. They sent him a
recording of the track with the “gibberish” vocal of Morten. The response was positive: “I like the vibe”, was the
answer from the west African country, and a few months later Safri Duo stood in the studio of Youssou N’Dour in
Dakar. The African star wrote his own text in the local language, Wolof, so it was phonetically allied to Morten’s
“gobbledygook”.

So saying Twilight wasn’t finish, because as a kind of color of contrast Safri Duo also invited the Mexican tenor star,
Rolando Villlazón to participate, and he welcomed the invitation. In fact more or less simultaneously he read an
article about Youssou, and thought it could be very interesting working together. With the duos network in the
classical world they succeeded in getting the world famous opera singer to record his vocal during a visit for a
concert in Copenhagen, and the result is a deeply fascinating and top melodic musically impact between different
cultures.

In that sense Twilight is the key to Origins, because Safri Duo intermix cultures, periods, styles and a lot more on
the album with many surprising results. There are more word pictures from Africa, for instance in Lunar, where
Youssou N’Dour also contribute, whereas there other places traces influences from Celtic folklore. On the
beautiful Athena the Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa performs, who it succeeded to get together in a
studio in Sweden, as late as the 16th of October, few days before delivering the master, in one of the rare breaks
from touring of the choir.

So to speak the time pressure was enormous with several balls in the air at the same time, but Uffe Savery and
Morten Friis have kept the overview, because they know the rules of the game after more than 20 years in music
business. Though at no point it has become routine, because they are both two enquiring souls and therefore
always open to new ideas and impulses. Like that also a huge waste container from the back stairs in the new
Danish Broadcasting Media city in Copenhagen came to play an important role in the track Corpus Rex, which self-
evident must be defined as Trash-Metal!

In the hands of Safri Duo everything can become music. It’s about timing. And it’s about trust to each other. Uffe
Savery and Morten Friis know exactly where they have each other musically, because they have nearly always
known each other. Ever since they met as youngsters in the Tivoli Guards Boys Band. At this time Uffe wanted to
play the saxophone and Morten the trumpet, but by pure coincidence there was more need for percussion players
in the orchestra of the old amusement park, thus the destiny of the lads were sealed.

Later they both started at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music, where they kept their passion for percussion.
Half way through their studies, September 1988, they had their first official concert in the concert hall of the
Conservatory, and ever since it has only advanced in one constantly movement; hunting new goals and new places
to perform. The rumors of their great musicality and obvious originality soon spread like a wildfire to the entire
world. It brought them to some of the most prestigious concert scenes such as royal Albert Hall in London,
Carnegie Hall in New York City and Sydney Opera House, all places where only very few Danish musicians have
entered.

It became six albums with the classical music, before Safri Duo in 2000 hit the more pop-, trance- and techno
oriented path and got a worldwide breakthrough with the track Played-A-Live (The Bongo Song), which went Top
10 in many Asian and South American countries as well as in most European countries selling platin in Germany,
Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Norway and even sixfold platin in Denmark!

Ever since more international hits followed with Samb-Adagio, Sweet Freedom and All the People In The World, as
well as the two albums, Episode II and Safri Duo 3.0 brought in big sales and trophies around the world. In fact so
many, that the duo is the international best-selling Danish name after Aqua. But now it’s about a brand new album
from the innovative duo and thereby a fresh chapter in the history of Safri Duo.

The album Origins is released the 17th of November in Denmark.