BALKAN
CLARINET SUMMIT
Many Languages, One Soul
Piranha
2857
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It’s an orchestra! It’s a
small jazz ensemble! It’s a heavy metal concert! And it’s many other things as
well. The Balkan Clarinet Summit is a veritable United Nations of woodwind talent,
fertile ideas, and musical mastery. It’s fourteen tracks and more than an hour’s
worth of live clarinet-based instrumentals like you’ve never heard them before.
Go ahead and scoff. I did before I
listened.
The Summit is composed of
Stavros Pazarentis (Greece), Slobodan Trkulja (Serbia), Sergiu Balutel
(Moldavia/Rumania), Oguz Buyukberber (Turkey), and Orlin Pamukor (Bulgaria),
with arrangements and other contributions from Claudio Puntin (Italian Swiss
and Steffen Schorn (Germany). As the album title suggests, these skilled reed
players communicate in the language that transcends words: music. In one of
several bold moves, the project opens
with a piece titled “Nostalgia,” and it’s a bit like what you get if you took
some Gershwin, a medieval pastoral, and classical orchestral music and whirled
it about in a blender. If that doesn’t sound particularly “Balkan,” try pieces
such as “Geamparale” or “Severniaski Tanc,” each of which pulse with the
nervous energy of a dog chasing its own tail. Do you prefer an introspective, forlorn
feel? Try “Poéme.” Want to evoke a “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”-like foray into 20th
century modernism? Listen to “Sirba De Concert.” Or maybe you just want to hear
how many sounds you can get from a reed instrument. Check out the heavy metal licks of “Snake Lick
Jab,” which also contains scratches and funky grooves that will make you
ponder, “Clarinet hip hop?” There’s even a brief moment in “Breaza” where the
clarinet evokes a didgeridoo, though most of the piece sounds like a drunken
dance of mosquitoes (in a good way). Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow remarked that “music is the universal language of mankind.”
Many
Languages, One Soul is living testament to the truth of the poet’s words. –
Rob Weir
Here's the official trailer
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