In January 2021 Fadi teamed up with a friend composer from Berlin Fritz Wengler to rewrite 13 most notable classical pieces for a salsa big band. 

"We started the project in late January playing some ideas on the piano in Fritz’s studio. After that 2 months of researching, arranging and mock-up scoring followed. In the meantime I got in touch with Sascha at Warner Chappell and told him about our idea, he got on board and said we could release it as a production music album (for sync rights etc.).

The music 
Arranging classical pieces to fit with a salsa vibe was surprisingly easy. Classical music is structured and there are plenty of recognisable themes within one piece that could be used in the salsa music. Melodies can easily be rhythmically changed to fit the Latin vibe while still retaining the authenticity and thus, in retrospect, we were spoilt for choice. What we didn’t want to do was to create complex structures that exist in classical music. We wanted to make them easy on the ear and above all we wanted people to dance to them. This is probably the reason why we also had to re-compose some of the music to fit this with an app initial idea. 

What is the craziest piece you have in the album?Beethoven’s moonlight sonata begins with the funeral march played on a solo trumpet, and then breaks into the same theme played as a cheerful lambada. Towards the end of the peace it climaxes in a quasi reggaeton  vibe, which got stuck in my head after I watched a random Facebook video with an African funeral, and the Coffin bearer is cheerfully dancing back-and-forth to a heavy Reggaeton beat.