The Whole Music Experience

  image missing Kayhan Kalhor Brooklyn Rider Silent City World Village I have over the years heard several recordings by Iranian kamanche master Kayhan Kalhor. The first recording to capture my ears was the recording, Rain by Ghazal which casted an enchanting spell over me. I have also heard his work with The Dastan Ensemble and his recording The Wind with Erdal Erzincan. Kalhor has proven not only his mastership over his exotic instrument, but also his adaptability to a variety of musical genres. That is not to say that he performs his instrument in a variety of genres, but that he fuses his tradition with those from other cultures. And since I have grown to admire Kahlor's work, I feel excited when I see his name gracing yet another CD cover. On Silent City , once again we see Kalhor fusing Persian classical music with another music tradition--European classical meets the Silk Road. The musicians in Brooklyn Rider fall into an experimental-avant-classical style, that ...

Mamadou Diabate Douga Mansa World Village Regular readers of this blog will know about my fascination with West African griot music and instruments. I was quite pleased to receive a review copy of Malian griot kora player Mamadou Diabate's Douga Mansa . It falls into West African classical music with Diabate playing solo kora throughout. And yet, with this single instrument, Diabate coaxes a rich tapestry of moods from his harp, not to mention an array of striking rhythms. The press notes cited, "..in Diabate's hands, the kora proves capable of infinite variation, encompassing delicately articulated structures, swirling eddies of glissandi, pounding vertical rhythms and roaring cataracts of arpeggio." Which sounds a lot like a review of European classical music and why I am treating this CD as African classical music. West African is not short of virtuoso kora players, a category in which Mamadou finds himself. His cousin is Toumani Diabate, another fabulous ...

Natacha Atlas Ana Hina World Village I have admired Middle Eastern vocalist Natacha Atlas' rich vocals for a long time, but not until now am I able to hear those vocals in an acoustic setting. Her newest album, Ana Hina , produced and arranged by Harvey Brough is a gem. Atlas' vocals find themselves backed by a lush east-west orchestra. And the choice of material covered also spans east and west with covers of Fairuz, Rahbani Brothers, Abdel Halim Hafez and Nina Simone. I have enjoyed listening to Ana Hina from the first moment I placed it in my CD player. The beautiful melodies sung in Arabic, Spanish (on La Vida Callada ), and English provoke a spellbinding quality--a magic carpet ride, if you will. Hearing the Appalachian folk classic, Black is the Color (once covered by Nina Simone as a piano solo), certainly adds another dimension. And the inclusion of a poem by Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo which becomes a musical dialogue between Atlas and multi-instrumentalist Cl...

Monika Mauch (soprano) Nigel North (lute) A Musical Banquet ECM New Series It took awhile before I became a fan of English renaissance lutenist John Dowland's work. I had already been enjoying renaissance lute and vocal music which reminded me of medieval troubadour songs as well as, more contemporary blues. Yet, Dowland was not the easiest pill to swallow, since often, but not always, his lyrics seemed melancholic. Never mind that that was the rage at that time of Elizabethan, England. Many of the Dowland recordings, with the exception of Sting's Songs from the Labyrinth (which is quite edgy), feature bel canto vocals set over the shimmering strings of lutes. Soprano Monika Mauch and lutenist Nigel North bring us a collection of lute songs on their recording, Musical Banquet . The pieces were originally published as a collection called Musical Banquet by Robert Dowland (John's son), in 1610. I do not know how the original pieces were set or how they sounded. But...

Carolin Widmann (violin) Robert Schumann The Violin Sonatas ECM New Series The legendary Romantic era composer Robert Schumann was born during at time when amorous affairs could and often did lead to venereal disease. Since antibiotics had not been discovered yet, many artists, composers, etc succumbed to various disabilities, including deafness, and madness as consequences of the disease. Schumann suffered from madness towards the end of his life, I read due to a venereal disease he had contracted earlier. Married to another legendary figure, Clara Schumann, you might often encounter this musician-composer couple when reading about classical music. Or you might encounter the couple when attending a symphony or chamber music house party. That sadly, is about all I know about the Schumanns at this point. However, the new ECM recording, Robert Schumann The Violin Sonatas , performed by German violinist Carolin Widmann and Hungarian pianist Dènes Vàrjon, acts as my baptism into...