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| Forever improvising, Arifa add Chinese, Persian and Bulgarian to their musical mix this Friday |
CULTURE / MUSIC
For thousands
of years, the Silk Road has carried trade and cultural exchanges from the Far
East through to Europe and back again. This
Friday, a double bill of artists will draw on these ancient world traditions to
make music that transcends time and geography.
Amsterdam-based
Arifa have an expansive sound that goes beyond musical genres and national
boundaries. The four band members, who originate from Turkey (Sjahin During), Greece
(Michalis
Cholevas), Romania (Alex Simu) and Germany
(Franz
von Chossy), have already
carved out a name for themselves with their eclectic musical forays into the
Balkans and Anatolia .
In this new
project, guest musicians, Xiaoxu Meng from China, Niusha Barimani from Iran and
Vanya Valkova from Bulgaria add their own traditional stringed instruments and
hauntingly beautiful traditional singing styles to Arifa’s melting pot of world
sounds.
This exciting
new blend has Songlines Magazine exclaiming: “Arifa strikes gold. This
is music that can make you shiver with delight”.
Here’s a taste
of this week’s Arifa concert here.
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| The Lyres of Ur. Photo: British Musseum |
Also performing
this Friday are The Lyre Ensemble. Led by Stef Connor (The Unthanks, and composer-in-residence
for Streetwise Opera), whose voice Resonance FM Joe Cushley describes as “eerily
beautiful” and “perfect in
evoking the Babylonian blues.”
The Ensemble will
be building a musical bridge to ancient Mesopotamia
using replicas of the 4,500 year-old Lyres of Ur (the world’s oldest surviving
stringed instruments). Babylonian and Sumerian poems are transformed into contemporary
songs, offering a fascinating window into a lost world, while lyrics prove to
be as relevant today as they were in the past.
The concert is
part of the Barbican’s Transcender season of contemporary music events and is supported
by the Dutch Embassy.
Concert: Arifa and
Voices from the East + The Lyre Ensemble
Date: Friday 25 September 2015
Start time: 7.30pm
Venue: Union Chapel, Compton Terrace,
London N1 2UN
Admission: £20
(+ booking fee for online bookings)
More info: www.barbican.org.uk/music
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