Santiago Quartet – Language of the Heart

Tags

Argentinian Music, Astor Piazzolla, Cressida Wislocki, Johanna McSweeney, Jonathan Hennessey-Brown, Julian Rowlands, Language of the Heart, Music review, Rowan Bell, Santiago Quartet, Tango Music, Will Todd

Argentina and England; music the powerful language of the heart

Happenstance took me to a concert given by the Santiago Quartet, some weeks ago. The programme was exactly what is on this CD. Captivated almost from the off, (the strange, almost sax like, edge of sexy, edge of pain violin squeals were an initial shock) I was swept away by the vibrancy, intensity and playfulness of this music, moving without hesitation between rapid extremes of exuberance, ecstasy, mischief and melancholic longing.

I knew nothing of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla. His ‘Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’ yes give the occasional nod to Vivaldi’s, but are of Paizzolla’s time and space. This is a fusion of tango, with its insistent rhythms and call to dance, with that inner reflectiveness, – be STILL and listen which is the heritage of classic concert music. That tension between still listening and – no – dance, move, whilst you can – we have such a little time to inhabit dynamic physicality was quite electrifying

The music inhabits emotional extremes, flickering instantly between oppositions, and is both intensely of its place, Argentina, but also draws the inheritance and influences from both classical music, modern classical music and jazz. It is utterly delicious.

Astor Piazzolla and Bandoneon

So to Santiago Quartet – 2 violins, ( Rowan Bell, Johanna McWeeneey) a viola, (Cressida Wislocki) a cello (Jonathan Hennessey-Brown) – joined on the Piazzolla pieces by a bandoneon (Julian Reynolds) They played with delight, intensity, sensitivity and passion, music which obviously spoke to their heart.

As well as the Beunos Aires Four Seasons, there is an altogether darker and more unsettling piece, Anxiety. I was not surprised, on racing away to buy the CD which was on sale at the concert venue, that this particular piece was one written after the composer had had serious health problems. The track Oblivion speaks both of faith and identity and was written as a film score with connections to a play by Pirandello

The final piece, by English composer Will Todd, could not be more different. The mood is far more restrained, internalised, and infused with both a very English melancholy and a final accepting quietude. This was a piece commissioned by the cellist’s mother. It also moved me intensely, though in a different way. Gone was the need to dance, the yearning was towards something transcendent.

I was even more pleased I had surrendered to the need to buy this CD from the Quartet, after the concert, and not waited to buy later on line – a percentage of the profits bought from the musicians themselves goes to MIND. The cellist, introducing one of the pieces, spoke movingly about personal history with mental health, and the importance of music ‘The Language of the Heart’ Not only the title of the CD, but the place all the music here inhabits, and the place the musicians interpreted from, and spoke from the composers’ hearts, their own hearts, to ours, listening

Santiago Quartet – Language of the Heart UK
Santiago Quartet – Language of the Heart USA

And…to those who might have noticed my absence – pressure of work, dear hearts, has meant for some time that I have time to read or to write about what I am reading, but rarely both. The amount which MUST be reviewed (those ARCS) is Everest like now, and no matter how much I try to tell myself I cannot open another book without addressing that must-be-reviewed pile, the flesh is weak, very weak indeed. All of us who pride ourselves (alas! pride!) on maintaining our own particular reviewing style and standard just can’t surrender to doing something simpler and less intensive than what we normally do.

I may (or may not) manage to get the odd to be reviewed pile marginally reduced over the coming weeks and months – the challenge then becomes remembering backlogs (goes scrabbling for ginkgo biloba)

Advertisement

Kayhan Kalhor + Ali Bahrami Fard – I Will Not Stand Alone

Tags

Ali Bahrami Fard, Bass santour, I Will Not Stand Alone, Iranian music, Kayhan Kalhor, Persian music, Shah Kaman

Iranian Heart, Iranian Soul

Kayhan Kalhor, the Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) player, is as consummate a musician and artist as one could dream of. He combines astonishing virtuosity and passionate immersion in his music, with playing which is charismatic, stellar – and, yet, curiously without ‘look at me ego’ or hogging centre stage, muscling out his ‘supporting musicians’ Kalhor doesn’t really do ‘supporting musicians’. He works peer to peer with other musicians

What he does do is to work with a range of other musicians, sometimes from his own culture’s musical traditions, sometimes cross culturally, as in his work with Ghazal, marrying the Iranian kamancheh with instruments from India’s classical musical tradition – sitar, tabla, vocals. And sometimes he works with musicians better known in the European classical music traditions, most notably with Yo Yo Ma, playing a wealth of Asian music in the Silk Road series of albums.

Whatever Kalhor does, he brings devotion to his work. Whatever brilliance, finesse and mastery he brings to his playing everything is designed to shine the brilliance of the music itself. There is surrender to the music, surrender to the joint practice of playing music with others, and, if you are fortunate enough to experience a live concert with Kalhor, as I recently was, surrender to the experience of unfolding and revealing music in a shared experience for the active listener to enter into this space.

This particular CD, with music which arose out of Kalhor’s own experience of his country’s recent political dark places, is a meditation on music as expression of suffering, as well as music as a shared, collective experience to provide some ease from that dark night of isolation, and existential aloneness

Here, in accompaniment with Ali Bahrami Fard, we have two musicians playing adapted versions of traditional Iranian instruments. Fard is playing the santour, a shimmering, percussive dulcimer instrument – but it is a bass santour, much larger, with a wider musical range, 96 strings, 24 bridges instead of the traditional 72 and 18

Meanwhile Kalhor is playing a new instrument, developed especially for him by the instrument maker Peter Biffen, the shah Kaman, with different stringing, and using a lighter sounding board made of wood rather than skin, with, again, the possibility of richer lower notes.

At the live concert, which this CD is a version of, the two musicians were electrifying, playing for well over an hour, a continuous piece of music (here, on the CD briefly broken into movements with track names, rather than stand alone tracks).

The music ranges from dark anguish, quiet reflection, a maelstrom of passion and energy, anger, despair, resilience, shared commitment. At times so frenetic and wild is the music that it seems impossible to sit with it, the wild expression of dance is an insistent call. Restrained by the initial hearing of the music in a concert hall, I found a subtler response, listening to the dynamic movement of the music from within physical stillness, letting the music shape itself and move within, rather than cause external movement. It deepened my appreciation of this wonderful music, and the absolute focus brought by the inspired musicians

I Will Not Stand Alone Amazon UK
I Will Not Stand Alone Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Untold Things

Tags

Jocelyn Pook, Music review, Soundtrack, Untold Things, World music

Frankly weird, a mash-up, but definitely haunting

I had never heard of Jocelyn Pook, till a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video of a piece of `sacred style’ Western choral singing composed by her, very much in Early Music polyphony mode (which I love)

Alas, this was a while ago and I can no longer find that particular clip

However I also love the strange atonal, dissonant singing and ululations of Arabic music. And it turns out that Ms Pook, best known for film and TV sound tracks, (Eyes Wide Shut, by all accounts propelled her to a wider audience) works with a fusion of Western classical, and strands of world music which clearly pull in threads from the Balkans, the Middle East, India, and she also incorporates more modern, electronic techniques – reverb, sampled sounds. And then there is a rich and sumptuous vein of high romantic and lyrical use of Western classical strings, lush and emotional.

And, on this particular album  some up-beat, tabla driven rhythmic numbers, which invite the listener to groove, move and sway

This shouldn’t really work, somehow it does! Personally I found the more dance upbeat numbers were not quite as alluring as the other tracks, missing the stranger, more unusual quality of the other, intensely emotional tracks.

The YouTube embed is of Requiem aeternam, a track from another Pook album Flood
Untold Things Amazon UK
Untold Things Amazon USA

 

Birds-Parandeh’Ha

Tags

Homa Niknam, Hossein Alizadeh, Iranian music, Madjid Khaladj, Persian classical music, World music

Floating on Thermals

This is music of wide horizons, spacious and with no sense of strain in its production from the musicians. This is particularly, and spectacularly, true of Homa Niknam’s vocals. You can really hear how open her throat must be to produce these soaring, floating, turning sounds, ululations, undulating vibrato, pure held notes, sudden stops. This music touches something ancient, almost primeval, a melancholy, and an awestruck acceptance; humankind, gazing up at the stars, aware of distances and scale

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky

to quote another troubadour (Leonard Cohen)

The musicians are Hossein Alizadeh on setar, Madjid Khaladj, percussion, and Homa Niknam – vocals don’t describe the half of it. Amazing Persian classical music
Birds-Parandeh’Ha Amazon UK
Birds-Parandeh’Ha Amazon USA

Ghazal – Moon Rise Over The Silk Road

Tags

Ghazal, Kayhan Kalhor, Moon Rise Over The Silk Road, Music review, Shujaat Hussain Khan, World music review

More magic from the musicians of Ghazal as they continue along the silk road

Once again Ghazal prove they have much more to say to each other in the conversations which particularly the kamancheh and sitar, but also tabla and occasional vocals, are enjoying

In Fire In My Heart the sitar and kamancheh weave around and through each other, somehow conveying an ineffable longing, romantic and spacious, melancholy and sorrowful. It’s curiously mortal music, seeming to exist in a place which is always aware of the passing of time, that everything fades and dies, whilst it savours the moment most deeply. The vocals fall into the places gently, floating and weaving through the instruments. What strikes me so much with Ghazal is a sense of the musicians deeply listening to each other, and deeply listening to the music which is arising, whether this is reflective, or catching the moment when the mood changes, as in the second half of the first track, and becomes shimmery, brilliant and dynamic, inviting the tabla to drive this with excitement. This is a wonderful piece to dance to, as in Gabrielle Roth, Five Rhythms, allowing the music to move through the body of the listener, from flowing through staccato, chaos, lyrical and a return to stillness

The second track, Pari Mahal almost has a circle dance feel to it, with its flamboyance, trotting rhythms, dips and glides. The music and musicians show off their skills – the piece almost seems to touch close to a more Western `jamming session’, even including a small central section which sounds incredibly Celtic! Hoots Och Aye!

The final long track Besh’no az Nay seems a little more prosaic than the high wildness of the first track, a retelling of tall tales, favourite old jokes and happy moments by a group of friends at ease in each others’ company, the vocals creamy and seductive. A track to be listened to whilst savouring fine sweetmeats and small glasses of tea!
Moon Rise Over The Silk Road Amazon UK
Moon Rise Over The Silk Road Amazon USA

Ghazal – As Night Falls On The Silk Road

Tags

As Night Falls On The Silk Road, Ghazal, India, Iran, Kamancheh, Kayhan Kalhor, Music review, Shujaat Hussain Khan, Sitar, Swapan Chaudhuri, Tabla, World music review

‘Felt In The Blood, and Felt Along The Heart’

I expect music to inhabit me, to possess me, and to speak to something I barely understand, and cannot conceptualise. The last thing i want from music is that it should be ‘a background’ – it must be an experience.

And so it is with ‘As Night Falls on the Silk Road’. This skillful and sensitive blending of the Iranian spike fiddle and the Indian sitar, tabla and devotional vocal certainly IS felt viscerally, emotionally. The bent notes of Shujaat Hussain Khan‘s sitar and unforced vocals, Kayhan Kalhor‘s kamancheh and the dynamic, full sound of Swapan Chaudhuri‘s tabla making my heart swell. There are tracks which demand the listener to move and dance under the stars (Snowy Mountains) and others, such as the longest and final track, Traces of the Beloved, which move with ease between still, internal reflection and explosion into unstoppable movement – a perfect balance between the motions of the heart itself, as it pauses and receptively fills with blood, and forcefully expels that blood through the ventricles. Heart music indeed; diastole and systole. Gorgeous.

Ghazal are an amazing and enhancing fusion group and the fine and wonderful players, coming from two venerable musical traditions, produce something new, dynamic and rich. This is music which belongs under the cold clear night sky,under vast horizons, far from the hemmed in spaces of cities, unconfined and free, music as narrative, through time and space. And if you are listening in a room, it will transport you back, and out!
As Night Falls On The Silk Road Amazon UK
As Night Falls On The Silk Road Amazon USA

For some obscure reason the live link to mp3 samples won’t work on the USA site – you need to choose the mp3 option once on the product page. Lucky UK Amazonians can find the samples no problem!

Ernst Reijseger – Requiem for a Dying Planet

Tags

Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, Ernst Reijseger, Mola Sylla, Music review, Requiem for a Dying Planet, Soundtrack, Werner Herzog, World music review

Shivery, aching music for the end of time

This is an utterly splendid, stunningly beautiful, piece of music, which, even without the Werner Herzog films it is soundtrack for, suggests space opening up, relics of all we have loved and lost, and humanity itself, vanished on the wind. All we were, all we created, gone. The first track, a richly pure unknown vocalist floats a classical devotional `Thanks Be to God’ Danke Sei Gott’ in a way which seems to lift into the stratosphere, dissolving into Reijseger’s cello and disembodied isolated notes. This then settles into the overall musical flavour, which is a rich weaving of the cello, accompanying the ancient, earthy, visceral sounds of the vocalists – Senegalese singer and musician, Mola Sylla, singing in Wolof, with a voice of rich ululations and resonance (he also plays kalimba, xalam, percussions), weaving with some of the amazing drones and tapestry of throat music sounds of Sardinian polyphonic music, both sacred and secular, sung by Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, marrying two traditional singing modes.

The powerful combinations of voices, cello, other instrumentation, and natural sounds which come at the ends of songs – water, wind, thunder, suggest the sadness of a planet now without life.

This is music for and by those who value and hold sacred Gaia, and all that creeps, and bounds upon her, swims within her waters, or flies in her skies It also speaks to those who treasure and value our several histories, as creatures who are nurtured by earth, even as we destroy her
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon UK
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Flood

Tags

Africa, Early music, Flood, Jocelyn Pook, Kathleen Ferrier, Music review, sacred music, Soundtrack, World music review

The weird, wonderful, Puckish Ms. Pook

Jocelyn Pook’s fascination with both the sacred early music traditions of Christianity, and the music of northern Africa, the nomadic tradition and Islamic influence, easily puts a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.

From the beginning track where ethereal female voices sing a choral Requiescat, she moves into something which opens out the horizons on the second track, with a vista of sandy deserts and nomadic camel riders, except that the strange beat, the synthesised soundscape behind the ululating female voices, suggest an almost other world, futuristic planet.

The fourth track, Oppenheimer, where the narrative voice at the beginning makes reference to Hindu devotional texts, Vishnu the destroyer, is apocalyptic. There is a harsh, windy soundscape which sounds like the end of the world has happened, through which weave and interweave prayerful music from Christianity and equally devotionally intense music of Arabic influence. It is almost like some final, terrible battle between major faiths, and at the end of things is harshness, and the beauty which mankind created (music) left to remind us of the devotion and the savagery of faiths.

Another track starts with the urban voices of children at play, and weaves the rich voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Winds Southerly with the small soprano female choir singing a Pie Jesu. Pook clashes worlds together in an utterly new, hypnotic way

I don’t know who is responsible for the primary female vocals on most of the tracks, the floated voice, but it is sublime!
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon UK
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon USA