Terres Turquoises | Turquoise Lands
Ensemble Constantinople · Françoise Atlan
medieval.org
constantinople.ca
Atma "Classique" ACD 2 2314
Ⓟ + © 2004
1. Pishrow Mahur, Duyek [5:14]
Gazy Giray Han, 1554-1607 (Ottoman composer)
2. La princessa y el caballero [7:09] Salonika
3. Pishrow Mahur, Dowre Kabir [2:08] Gazy Giray Han
4. Esta noche Salonique Salonika [4:21] Salonika
5. Farah [4:48] Persian radif
6. Ven querida [2:27] Istanbul
7. Caballero [3:47] Istanbul
8. Hero y Leandro [2:50] Salonika
9. A la una [5:19] Spain
11. La mala suegra [5:18] Smyrna
11. Zendali [2:53] Malouf Constantinois
12. El alma dolorida [4:23] Salonika
13. La llamada a la morena [2:35] Izmir
14. La mal casada [3:04] Alexandria
15. Visage de Sylphe [5:47]
Kiya Tabassian, poem by Hâfez (14th-century Persian poet)
16. Dunala [1:50] Spain
CONSTANTINOPLE
Kiya Tabassian
Kiya Tabassian — setar, artistic direction
Guy Ross — 'ud, harp
Matthew Jennejohn — mute cornett, cornetto, recorders
Isabelle Marchand — fiddle
Ziya Tabassian — tombak, daf, dayereh, def, riq
Françoise Atlan — voice
Research and preparation: Kiya Tabassian, Guy Ross
We acknowledge the financial support of the Govemment of Canada through the Canada Music Fund for this project.
Recorded and produced by Johanne Goyette
Église Saint-Augustin de Mirabel (Québec), May 10, 12, 13, 2003
Digital mastering: Anne-Marie Sylvestre
Booklet editor:Jacques-André Houle
Graphic design:Diane Lagacé
Cover: Borromeo Art Resource, NY
Interior, 1367. Jami Masjid (Congregational Mosque), Gulbarga, Karnataka (Mysore), India.
Turquoise Lands
This recording is a tribute to the Turquoise Lands. The land of each and every person,
it is the garden of his memories and of his imagination. There, he sows
the seeds of his thoughts and hopes, and nourishes them with his
beliefs and his principles. It is the physical and metaphysical place
where everyone takes root and in turn gives it meaning, vision, aroma,
and colour.
Yet turquoise is much more than a colour. lt is the
symbol that unites man in a great region that stretches from the Western
Mediterranean to Central Asia and even as far as India. As in the
sparkling water, the dazzling sky, and the splendid monuments—whether a
mosque, synagogue, church, palace or caravansary—the colour turquoise is
a primordial element in the visual environment of the entire region.
The
Turquoise Lands are foremost those creative spaces where, regardless of
country, creed or politics, there is a certain commonality of vision
that is to be found in many aspects of these people's lives. This
territory has created a deep symbiosis as well as a homogenous cultural
and social entity that is one of humanity's great legacies.
The
present CD features instrumental and vocal music representing a variety
of traditions from these Turquoise Lands. The Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish)
romances have mainly come down to us through the oral tradition of
Sephardic people from various countries around the Mediterranean. The
two pesrevs by Gazy Giray, an Ottoman composer from the end of
the sixteenth century, are taken from the rich collection of
instrumental music notated by Dimitrie Cantemir. Visage de Sylphe
is a composition inspired by Indian vocal techniques, set to a gazal by
Hafez, a great fourteenth-century Persian poet. Again from Persia, Farah
is one of the oldest instrumental pieces still part of today's
repertoire of classical Persian music. The Constantinois Malouf is
played here in an instrumental version.
KIYA TABASSIAN
TRANSLATION: JACOUES-ANDRE HOULE
Françoise Atlan — voice
Born
in 1964 and graced with a naturally beautiful voice developed through
her childhood, Françoise Atlan began to learn the piano with her mother
at age six. Her musical studies at the Saint-Étienne and Aix-en-Provence
conservatories were rewarded in 1984 with Prizes in piano and chamber
music. While a student of musicology at the university of Aix-Marseille,
she perfected her vocal technique and her grasp of the lyric repertoire
with Andréa Guiot at the Paris Opéra.
With the contemporary music
choir conducted by Roland Hayrabedian, she distinguished herself in the
solo part of Maurice Ohana's Cantigas, the recording of which
obtained the Grand Prix de l'Académie du Disque in 1987. From 1987 to
1989 she was First Soloist with the vocal ensemble Musicatreize,
specializing in contempo-rary music (Ohana, Ligeti, Nono).
Her
Judeo-Berber roots brought her to develop a keen interest in traditional
music, particularly of the Mediterranean region. Her international
career has led her to sing both the repertoires of Western early music
and of traditional music with great success in the United States, Japan,
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Great Britain, Morocco, Tunisia, ex-Yugoslavia,
Holland, Belgium, Norway, and Israel.
Ms. Atlan regularly gives
master classes at the Ethno-musicological workshops in Geneva, the Basel
Schola Cantorum, and at the Centre de Musique Médiévale in Paris. She
won the 1998 Prix Villa Médicis Hors les Murs, which gave her the
opportunity to perfect the Arabic-Andalusian repertoire of Fez tradition
for three years with Mohammed Briouel. ln 2001, Françoise Atlan took
part in the creation of Florence Bachet's work Femmes, commissioned by
Radio France and performed with the Ensemble FA conducted by Dominique
My.
Constantinople
Since its inception in
1998, Constantinople has endeavoured to find a unique mode of expression
and a new, creative approach to interpreting the music of the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. To do so, the group juxtaposes a careful study
of historical manuscripts with a pursuit of the living oral tradition
of the Near and Middle East—more specifically, the classical Persian
tradition.
The ensemble uses early European instruments such as the
lute, vihuela, medieval harp, viola da gamba, fiddle, recorder,
cornetto, and shawm, alongside instruments frorn the Middle East such as
the setar (a plucked stringed instru-ment from Persia), the tombak,
daf, and dayereh (Persian percussion instru-ments), and the 'ud (one of
the most ancient instruments of the Middle East and the Mediterranean,
and the ancestor of the European lute).
These instruments have a rich
history and a musical heritage that is kept alive by each of the
musicians in the ensemble. Through their knowledge and skills, the
members of Constantinople breathe new life into music of the past while
creating a new, rich aesthetic experience in the present.
Constantinople,
under the artistic direction of Kiya Tabassian, explores the music from
the cultural sphere of the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance. The group cultivates a unique form of expression that gives
free rein to creativity and improvisation, yet respects the basic forms
of the music it seeks to reinterpret.
Kiya Tabassian — setar, artistic director
Born in Tehran in 1976, Kiya Tabassian received his initial training in Persian
music
from Mehrdad Torabi at the Bahârlou Institute in Tehran, from Reza
Ghassemi in Paris, and Kayhan Kalhor in Montreal. He has since continued
to develop his instrumental skills independently. He has also studied
composition at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal with Gilles
Tremblay and Michel Gonneville. He has taken advanced tuition in
classical Persian music with Dariush Talai.
ln 1989, he founded the
Tahmassebi Ensemble, which he directed for two years and for which he
contributed several compositions. He is the co-founder of
Constantinople, CodexQuartet and Radical 3, ensembles that have
performed in a number of Canadian cities. In addition, he performs
regularly throughout the U.S., France, Greece, and Mexico, both as a
soloist and with other musicians.
In 2000, he was composer in
residence for Musique Multi Montréal with a project entitled "Poussières
d'étoiles." Along with his brother Ziya, he recorded a first CD of
Persian classical music entitled Garden of the Memory and three CDs with Constantinople on the ATMA label.
He
is active in the MediMuses project as a member of the research group on
the history of Mediterranean music. Kiya is a member of the Conseil
Québécois de la Musique. He has received several grants from the Canada
Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
Guy Ross — 'ud, medieval harp
Guy Ross earned a B.A. in lute performance at Laval University. Since then, he
has
specialized in vocal and instrumental music of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. Serious research led him to develop ideas and a playing
technique based on the study of treatises and other repertoires from the
14th to the 17th centuries.
As well, he has polished his vocal and
instrumental approach to the interpretation of medieval music through
work with Benjamin Bagby and Barbara Thornton of the Ensemble Sequentia.
Over
the past several years, he has developed a deep interest in the 'ud
(the lute of the Middle East) and has explored classical Turkish music,
in both practice and theory. He is presently a member of Constantinople,
an ensemble that explores early repertoires of the East. Guy Ross
teaches the lute at Laval University. He was a member of the ensembles
Anonymus and Strada for ten years.
Matthew Jennejohn — mute cornett, cornetto, recorders
Born
in British Columbia, Matthew Jennejohn pursues an active performing
career on the cornetto, recorder, and baroque oboe. A specialist in
music of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Middle Ages, he has performed
with many of the leading early music ensembles in North America
including Constantinople, the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal,
Les Boreades, Ensemble Arion, Tafelmusik, Les Voix Baroques, Tempesta di
Mare, Les Idées Heureuses, The Trinity Consort, La Nouvele Sinfonie,
and Les Violons du Roy.
He studied early music at the Royal
Conservatory of The Hague, McGill University, and the University of
British Columbia with Bruce Haynes, Marion Verbruggen, Ku Ebbinge, and
Peter Hannan as well as private instruction and workshops with William
Dongois and Bruce Dickey.
He is frequently heard on CBC Radio and
Radio-Canada, and has a number of CD recordings to his credit, with
Monica Huggett, Barthold Kuijken, Jaap ter Linden, Matthew White, and
Eric Milnes.
Isabelle Marchand — fiddle
Isabelle
Marchand began her studies on the viola da gamba with Louis Bégin and
Michel Ducharme. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the
Université de Montréal and an M.A. from McGill University, where she
studied with Mary Cyr. Throughout her years of training, she
participated in numerous workshops in both North America and Europe with
Sarah Cunningham, Jordi Savall, Wieland Kuijken, and Lawrence Dreyfus.
Upon completion of her studies in Montreal, she continued her training
for two years at the Koninklijk Conservatorium (Royal Conservatory) in
The Hague with Wieland Kuijken.
After returning to Montreal in 1987,
she joined the Royal Consort. As a regular member of the Ensemble
Claude-Gervaise from 1981 to 1992, she recorded with the group and
toured extensively in Europe, Mexico, and Canada. She was also a member
of La Nef for ten years. She is co-founder of Les Plaisirs baroques and
is now an active member of Constantinople.
Ziya Tabassian — percussion
Ziya
Tabassian started playing the tombak (a Persian percussion) at the age
of 11. From 1994 to 2001 he studied classical percussion with Julien
Grégoire in Montreal, and has completed a bachelor's degree in
percussion performance at the Université de Montréal. During the winter
of 2002, with the help of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec,
Ziya went back to Iran for an advanced course in tombak with M. Bahman
Rajabi. Recently, he completed a residency at the Banff Centre for the
Arts, where he explored contemporary music on Persian percussion
instruments.
He plays in several classical, modern, and world music
ensembles and is a co-founder and an active member of both
Constantinople (medieval and Renaissance music) and Duo Prémices
(soprano & percussion). Ziya has performed in several concerts in
Canada, the U.S., and Greece, notably at the World Music Institute in
New York, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, Megaron Mousikis in
Athens, and Chicago's VVorld Music Festival.
Ziya was invited to
participate in the recording of a new release by Kayhan Kalhor with the
Kronos Quartet. Also, along with his brother Kiya, he has recorded a CD
of Persian classical music entitled Garden of the Memory and has
three CDs with Constantinople on the ATMA label. He has also recorded
for several other productions, including with the Nouvel Ensemble
Moderne and En Chordais.
