Early-music master Jordi Savall is one of the world’s greatest and most adventurous musicians. Over the course of his career, his invigorating performances and passion for scholarship has brought classical music to life for millions of music lovers around the world. Savall’s exploration of non-Western repertoires continues with this collaboration between the members of Hespèrion XXI and musicians from Syria, Israel, Turkey, Morocco, Greece and Armenia.
“This project was conceived as an act of solidarity to help raise awareness of the dramatic conflict and the terrible war of repression suffered by the Syrian people, sharing musical experience with musicians from Syria and learning about the history of one of the world’s most ancient civilizations. The protagonists of this project are musical expressions apparently distant in time and space, music often forgotten beneath successive layers of modernism or undervalued because of its uncertain origins: dances, prayers, songs and laments of rare beauty and intense emotion which, thanks to their buoyancy, also free us from what can be the millstone of our roots and our avoidable isolation. These melodies and rhythms spring from the improvisations on the Oriental ney and our medieval flutes, from the fascinating chants of a mysterious and evocative Islam, from the gentle bowstrokes on the rebab and the steady sound of the Italian lira, from the beats and rhythms of the ouds from Morocco, Istanbul and Israel, from the sparkling notes picked out the Iranian santur and the Turkish kanun... all carried along and encompassed by the ever-present, vibrant, magical pulse of our indispensable ancestral percussions.” Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall viol
HESPÈRION XXI
Lior Elmaleh (Israel) Voice
Waed Bouhassoun (Syria) Voice & Oud
Katerina Papadopoulou (Greece) Voice
Moslem Rahal (Syria) Ney
Driss el Maloumi (Morocco) Oud
Yurdal Tokcan (Turkey) Oud
Hakan Güngör (Turkey) Kanun
Dimitri Psonis (Greece) Santur & Moresca
Pedro Estevan (Spain) Percussion
