Neue Musik Von Den Enden Der Seidenstrasse with Master

Konzerthaus Dortmund in Zusammenarbeit mit Aga Khan Music Initiative präsentieren Neue Musik von den Enden der Seidenstrasse with Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative Wu Man pipa Sirojiddin Juraev dutar and tanbur Basel Rajoub saxophone and duclar Feras Charestan qanun Abbos Kossimov doira Andreas Piccioni tamburello Program Dance of the Yi (Yízu Wu qu) Wang Huiran Wu Man, pipa Tea House Wu Man arranged by the performers Wu Man, pipa Feras Charestan, qanun Andrea Piccioni, frame drum Mehan Sirojiddin Juraev Sirojiddin Juraev, dutar Abbos Kosimov, frame drum Sayri Badakhshan Mamadato Tavalloev Asia Basel Rajoub Percussion duet Abbos Kosimov and Andrea Piccioni Abbos Kosimov and Andrea Piccioni, frame drums Wafaa Basel Rajoub Feras Charestan, qanun Basel Rajoub, duclar Mashq-i Dutar Sirojddin Juraev Tashkent Basel Rajoub Neue Musik von den Enden der Seidenstrasse Seven hundred years after Marco Polo, the Silk Road remains a potent symbol of cultural exchange and innovation inspired by encounters with the “other.” In the world of performing arts, such encounters are frequently billed as meetings of East and West or North and South. This evening’s performance, however, focuses on meetings between East and East—in particular, between musicians and musical traditions from Central Asia, the Middle East, and China. Though the title of the concert declares that it features new music, all of the performers have immersed themselves deeply in one or another historical musical tradition defined by canonical styles, repertoires, pedagogy, and performance techniques rooted in a sense of place and cultural identity. At the same time, in looking backward toward older, and, in some cases, truly archaic musical forms, this evening’s performers illuminate one of the universal axioms of artistic avant- gardes: that tradition can serve as an invaluable compass for exploring new forms of artistic consciousness and creativity inspired, but not constrained, by the past. An example is Sirojiddin Juraev’s “Mashq-i Dutar,” a recently composed work rooted in, but not constrained by, older models of dutar music from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. An analogous “neotraditional” work is “Dance of the Yi,” composed in the 1960s by Wang Huiran (b. 1936), who based it on folk tunes of the Yi people of southern China. “Dance of the Yi” is one of the signature pieces in the repertoire of Wu Man, who selected it for her audition to enter Beijing Central Conservatory in 1978 and won first place. Her recording of the piece was recorded and broadcast throughout the nation. Since then, it has become one of the most popular pieces in the pipa repertoire. Alongside this pipa classic, Wu Man offers her own contribution to “Silk Road music” in the irrepressibly cheery “Teahouse,” an homage to the sound of the traditional silk- stringed instruments and bamboo wind instruments that were played in teahouses in Wu Man’s hometown area of Zhejiang Province, in China’s southeast. Not long ago, Wu Man taught the quintessentially Chinese pentatonic melody of ‘Teahouse’ to qanun player Feras Charestan, who embellished it with his own improvised counterpoint. The beautifully integrated sound of the two instruments seems so natural that a listener could be excused for thinking that pipa and qanun have always been played together – and indeed, in a sense, they have. The pipa traces its ancestry to the Persian barbat, the short-necked lute with a bent scroll that may well have also provided the prototype for the Middle Eastern oud, and the melded sound of lutes and zithers is at the very center of traditional music from Iran and the Arab lands. Wind instruments also have both an old and new history in the Middle East. Local varieties of flutes, oboes, shawms, and clarinets are ubiquitous – hardly surprising given their perfect suitability for expressing the microtonal subtleties of the region’s many kinds of folk music as well as local dialects of the interregional classical maqam tradition, which extends from Casablanca to Kashgar. More recently, a rising generation of cosmopolitan Arab musicians has merged the timbres and tonalities of local instruments and musical styles with jazz, European classical music, and contemporary compositional and improvisatory practices. Saxophonist and duclar player Basel Rajoub is one of those musicians (the duclar is a hybrid instrument created by crossing the Armenian duduk with the clarinet). Conservatory-trained in Damascus, Rajoub is at once a consummate performer, skilled improviser, and highly original composer. His project Soriana (‘Our Syria’), several of whose members join him this evening, reflects the convergence of Rajoub’s broad musical influences and interests. Among these is frame drumming, which runs the gamut from humble accompaniment to virtuosic forms of solo performance. Frame drums can be found all along the Silk Road, from Europe to the Far East. Two versions of the frame drum are featured in this evening’s concert: the Uzbek-Tajik doira, virtuosically played by Abbos Kosimov, and the Italian tamburello, played with great subtlety by Andrea Piccioni, a native of Rome. In Piccioni’s hands, the tamburello becomes a protean percussion instrument that sounds indigenous to everywhere, blending effortlessly with the sonorities, rhythmic grooves, and affective conventions of music from the length and breadth of the Silk Road. If the “new music” in this evening’s concert is not entirely new, neither is it a modern-day simulacrum of long-ago cultural exchange. Rather, it represents music-making by artists grounded very much in the present whose musical journeys have zigzagged back and forth between Europe and North America, Asia, and the Middle East, and between engagement with forms of classical, folk, jazz, and contemporary concert music. In so doing, they have created a body of work that is at once seamless, surprising, and utterly original. Artists Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative is a collective of artists who create new music inspired by their own deep roots in the cultural heritage of the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin, South Asia, Central Asia, and China. These masters are the Aga Khan Music Initiative’s leading artistic collaborators—venerated performers and composer-arrangers who appear on the world’s most prestigious stages while also serving as teachers, mentors and curators who enrich the Music Initiative’s interregional network of education programmes. Linking countries and continents, and present and past through explorations of diverse forms of classical, folk, jazz, and contemporary concert music, the ensemble contributes strongly to the Music Initiative’s mission to invigorate cultural and intellectual pluralism in the nations it serves. Wu Man is a world-renowned performer on the pipa, a fourstringed Chinese lute with ancient roots that, due in large part to her efforts, has become a leading instrument of contemporary music in both East and West. Wu Man performs both traditional and contemporary music on the pipa, and many new works have been commissioned specially for her. She is a lead soloist with the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative and has played an active role in cross-cultural music making, in particular with members of China’s Uyghur minority. Wu Man is a founding member of the Silk Road Ensemble, created by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Sirojiddin Juraev is a master performer on long-necked lutes from Central Asia. Born and raised near the ancient city of Khujand, in northern Tajikistan, Sirojiddin learned to play the two-stringed dutar as a child and later studied with the great Uzbek master Turgun Alimatov. As a student at the Dushanbe Academy of Maqom, created by the Aga Khan Music Initiative in 2003, Sirojiddin also studied tanbur and sato (bowed tanbur) with ustad Abduvali Abdurashidov. Sirojiddin is active as a composer and arranger, and has created a body of new virtuoso works for dutar, tanbur, and sato. He performs both as a soloist and as a member of several ensembles, including Soriana Project, the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative, the Academy of Maqom, and Tajikistan’s State Shashmaqom Ensemble. Basel Rajoub is a saxophonist and composer-improviser whose inspirations include traditional Middle Eastern rhythms and melodies as well as jazz. Born in Aleppo, Syria, he graduated from the Damascus High Institute of Music and creates new music that brings together musicians from the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and Europe. A winner of Radio Monte Carlo’s Moyen-Orient Music Award, Basel Rajoub divides his time between performing, teaching, composing, and recording. Basel performs as a member of several ensembles, including the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative, and is the founding member of the Soriana Project. Feras Charestan is from the city of Al-Hasakeh, in the northeast of Syria, and studied qanun at the High Institute of Music in Damascus. He has performed as a qanun soloist with symphony orchestras and has been a member of popular bands as well as contemporary music ensembles, such as the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative, creating new music rooted in Middle Eastern traditions. Feras Charestan currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Abbos Kosimov was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, into a musical family. A disciple of the honored Uzbek doira player Tuychi Inogomov and winner of the Competition of Percussion Instruments of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Kosimov established his own doira school in 1994 and his ensemble, “Abbos,” in 1998. Kosimov performs internationally with Zakir Hussain and Randy Gloss’s percussion group Hand’s OnSemble, and recorded with Stevie Wonder and is a performer with the Master Musicians of the Aga Khan Music Initiative. Andrea Piccioni, a native of Rome, is a master performer on frame drums – single-headed drums, sometimes with jingles, played with the hands rather than with sticks.

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