Kronos, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Allison Girvan, Luciana Souza, Bach, Glenn Gould: Playlist for The Open Window for August 3 and 9, 2009

The Open Window airs at www.cjly.net (Kootenay Co-op Radio) Mondays at 6:30 am and Thursdays at 10 am

Kronos Quartet: Wa Habibi, Raga Mishra Bhairavi Alap, Mugyam Beyati Shiraz, and Tew Semagn Hagere from Floodplain (Nonesuch)

This is music from cultures that reside on floodplains
in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe. People living on floodplains are used to violent upheaval, and they are often melting pots, formed from many societies from all over. But we in the west tend to see them as homogeneous.

This music is centuries old and refreshingly new, much of it commissioned from contemporary composers.

There is music from Egypt, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Iraq, among other places. Some was written for the Kronos Quartet by such contemporary artists as the Palestinian electronic / hip hop collective Ramallah Underground and the Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov whose Hold me Neighbour In This Storm is worth the price of this CD which is full of beauty, integrity, and wonderful surprises.

It's fascinating to hear Kronos playing in so many styles; even more so to hear individual members playing as if from another culture: violist Hank Dutt becomes an Indian musician on Raga Mishra, and David Harrington an Azerbaijani on Tew Semagn Hagere.


Isabel Bayrakdarian: Lullaby, from Gomidas Songs (Nonesuch)

The Armenian composer Gomidas Vertabed (1869-1935) is known as the father of Armenian classical music. He took songs and dances of the Armenian peasantry and recreated them in European classical format. He did this because, as a survivor of the Armenian genocide, he thought this the best way to preserve Armenian musical heritage.

Isabel Bayrakdarian is an Armenian-Canadian opera singer. There is a wonderful video on You Tube of her singing this song accompanied by a quartet of Armenian players of the duduk (a Turkish-Armenian wind instrument) in an ancient Armenian ruin, here: http://tinyurl.com/9q7s2w.



Lusiana Souza: Sonnet 49, from Neruda (Sunnyside)

This Brazilian singer has elegantly put some of Neruda's poems to music. I urge you to watch her perform this song, self-accompanied on the kalimba.

Allison Girvan: Bright Morning Star from Resonance (Independent)

Allison Girvan is the cheerfully creative leader of the Corazon Vocal Ensemble in Nelson, B.C. and the bar-raising musical director for the Capitol Theatre summer youth productions as well as being a solo performer and one of Nelson's musical movers, shakers, mentors, and elders even though she's not that old. This song is purity itself.

Bach: Invention # 5, 14, 11, and 10, Glenn Gould, piano, from Bach: The Two and Three Part Inventions (Columbia)

Gryphon, Shakti, Bayrakdarian: playlist for Beethoven's Breakfast January 19, 2008

www.kootenaycoopradio.com, Mondays at 6:30 am PST

1. Gryphon Trio: Trio in C Minor K. 548 from Mozart, the Complete Piano Trios (Analekta)

"The gryphon, a Greek mythological creature that was the guardian of treasure and symbolized the joining of cosmic energy and psychic force, reflects the group's interest in many genres of music" (from the liner notes). The Toronto-based Gryphon Trio plays contemporary and classical works. http://www.gryphontrio.com/

2. Remember Shakti: Bell' Aria from Saturday Night in Bombay (Verve)

Remember Shakti is a group of Indian musicians led by tabla player Zakir Hussain and British guitarist John McLaughlin. In the early 1970's they formed the acoustic group Shakti and pioneered a fusion of jazz and Indian classical music. John McLaughlin, in the years before that, was a member of the Miles Davis bands that made the shocking Bitches Brew and the sublime In a Silent Way. Shakti broke up in the 1980's. McLaughlin and Hussain have worked creatively together and apart ever since to acquaint western and Indian music with each other. In fact they are among the founders of what we call "world music."

The group Remember Shakti was formed in 1997 with some of the original players and some new ones including the respected elder Hariprasad Chaurasia on flute. Here is a video of a small version of the group: .http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qyCH70FODJA

3. Isabel Bayrakdarian : Spring, Mount Alakyaz, Striding Beaming, and Lullaby, from Gomidas Songs (Nonesuch)

Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935) is known as the father of Armenian classical music. He was a survivor of the Armenian genocide of 1915, and in an attempt to save Armenian musical culture he took songs and dances of the Armenian peasantry and recreated them in a European classical format. The singer Isabel Bayrakdarian is an Armenian-Canadian who, in addition to being an up-and-coming opera star, holds a degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Toronto and was featured on the movie soundtrack for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and Atom Egoyan's "Ararat." For a stunning cultural experience watch her perform one of the songs from this CD, accompanied by four players of the duduk (an Armenian woodwind instrument of ancient origins), outdoors in an ancient ruin in Armenia, at http://tinyurl.com/9q7s2w.