945 - John Balke "Siwan"

Tuchia
O Andalusin¡
Jadwa
Ya Safwati
Ondas do mar de Vigo
Itimad
A la dina dana
Zahori
Ashiyin Raïqin
Thulâthiyat
Toda Ciencia Trascendiendo

Amina Alaoui: vocal
Jon Hassell: trumpet, electronics
Kheir Eddine M Kachiche: violin
Jon Balke: keyboards, conductor
Helge Andreas Norbakken: percussion
Pedram Khavar Zamini: zarb

Barokksolistene
Bjarte Eike: violin, leader
Per Buhre: violin
Peter Spissky: violin
Anna Ivanovna Sundin: violin
Milos Valent: violin
Rastko Roknic: viola
Joel Sundin: viola
Tom Pitt: cello
Kate Hearne: cello, recorder
Mattias Frostensson: double-bass
Andreas Arend: theorboe, archlute
Hans Knut Sveen: harpsichord, clavichord

[...]

The focus of Siwan is not one of strict musical scholarship, but rather the imagining of what music would have sounded like at a certain place and time lost to antiquity. That time and place is medieval Andalusia, the southern most region of Spain, where Muslim, Christian, and Jewish intellectual cultures mingled unmolested before the Spanish Inquisition. Balke's studies of the history and writings of the region revealed a thematic universality among the Sufi poets and the Catholic and Sephardic mystics, a fact clearly evident in the texts chosen for this special recital: literary works as seemingly diverse as the martyred Moor Al- Aallaj's "Thualthiayat" and San Juan de la Cruz's (St. John of the Cross), ecstatic "Todo ciencia trascendiendo" ("Rising Beyond All Science").

[...]
Michael Bailey / All About Jazz