Kayhan Kalhor + Toumani Diabaté: The Sky Is The Same Colour Everywhere 2023 + Kayhan Kalhor & Rembrandt Frerichs Trio: It's Still Autumn 2019

 

KAYHAN KALHOR

                  

Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (spiked fiddle), who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian around the

world and is a creative force in today’s music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. He has studied the music of Iran’s many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan, and has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon.
                     

Kayhan Kalhor, from Iran, is the leading player of the kamancheh, the Persian spike fiddle. Played kneeling down, Kayhan says it’s “like riding a wild horse”. It has four strings played with a short bow.

He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan and Masters of Persian Music. Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has also performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. He has composed music for television and film and was featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth Without Youth in a score that he collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov.
                 

John Adams invited him to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series and he has appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, sharing the program with the
Festival Orchestra performing the Mozart Requiem.

Kayhan is an original member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project for whom he continues to compose for and tour with. His compositions appear on all of the Ensemble’s albums. His most recent albums include Silent City, collaboration with Brooklyn Rider and I Will Not Stand Alone with santoor player Ali Bahrami Fard. Kayhan has been nominated for three Grammys and in 2017 was awarded a Grammy with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (2017).

TOUMANI DIABATE

                         

Toumani Diabaté 10 August 1965 – 19 July 2024) was a Malian kora player. In addition to performing the traditional music of Mali, he was involved in cross-cultural collaborations with flamenco, blues, jazz, and other international styles of music. In 2006, the London-based newspaper

The Independent named him one of the fifty best African artists. In its obituary, The Times described him as "a bold and innovative musical visionary". Diabaté was born on 10 August 1965 in Bamako, the capital of Mali, five years after the country had gained its independence from France. He came from a long family tradition of players of the kora, a 21-string west African harp-like instrument. His father, Sidiki Diabaté, recorded the first-ever kora album, in 1970.
                    

His mother, Nene Koita, was a singer. His family's oral tradition tells of 70 generations of musicians preceding him in a patrilineal line. His cousin Sona Jobarteh was the first female professional kora

player to come from a griot family. His younger brother Mamadou Sidiki Diabaté is also a kora player. According to Diabaté, a childhood illness resulted in his losing the use of his right leg, and he walked using a crutch. He played at festivals and concert halls around the world, and worked both as a soloist and with a remarkable array of other artists, ranging from his own Symmetric Orchestra to the guitarist Ali Farka Touré, the London Symphony Orchestra, and musicians from Spain, Cuba and Brazil.
                  

His exquisite, relaxed playing mixed the ancient and modern, as he switched from pieces that dated

back hundreds of years to his own compositions that he said reflected influences ranging from other African artists to Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and Pink Floyd. His kora work mixed bass lines with melodies and improvisation – it was as if several musicians were performing at once – and as a devout Muslim, he said: “Music was a gift to me from God, the kora was a gift to me from God.”

 

REMBRANDT FRERICHS  

                   

Rembrandt Frerichs (born 1977) is a jazz pianist and composer from the Netherlands. He leads a

few ensembles: Rembrandt Frerichs Trio and Levantasy. In his playing he is being influenced by the American jazz tradition, as well by philosophy and Arabic music. Frerichs teaches jazz piano on the conservatory of Tilburg.
             

Frerichs studied at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. He completed his studies in The Hague with honors. At the age of 22 he made his debut at the

North Sea Jazz Festival. Rembrandt plays in several of his own ensembles such as Rembrandt Frerich Trio, Chiaroscuro and (with Vinsent Planjer and Yoram Lachish) 'Levantasy'. He has also collaborated with Michael Brecker, the New Trombone Collective, Marnix Busstra, Michel Godard, and Hermione Deurloo. In addition to jazz, he was inspired by classical European music as well as Arabic music, for which he developed a passion during a two-year stay in Egypt.
                  

Frerichs teaches jazz piano at the Conservatory of Tilburg and has been a guest teacher at the

conservatories of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. He is also artistic director of various cultural events, such as the Rabo Jazz Festival (Oud-Beijerland), the Waterfront Jazz Club (Almere) and the Regentenkamer (The Hague). His debut album Self Portrait was nominated for an Edison Award In 2014, his album A Long Story Short was also nominated for this prestigious Dutch award.

KAYHAN KALHOR AND TOUMANI DABATE - THE SKY IS THE SAME COLOUR EVERYWHERE 2023

                     

The Sky Is the Same Colour Everywhere is a spiritual meditation - best listened to in one sitting - by two master musicians and culture bearers of centuries-old musical traditions sharing modes based on

Persian and Malian repertoires on kamancheh (spike fiddle) and kora (harp/lute). Kayhan Kalhor and Toumani Diabaté are both well-known soloists in their own right, but this duo recording is something special taking us on an improvisational musical journey into new landscapes. “It’s like this music was already there waiting for us,” says Toumani. “And it’s like the two of us knew each other before - in another life.”

                                     

Kayhan Kalhor And Toumani Diabaté – The Sky Is The Same Colour Everywhere
Label: Real World Records – CDRW238
Format: CD, Album, Stereo
Country: UK, Europe & US
Released: May 5, 2023
Genre: Folk, World, & Country, Ethnic
Style: African, Persian Classical

TRACKS

                        

01. Wayfarers Of The Legends    7:28
02. The Path Of No Return    15:10
03. Stay Here    2:48
04. Joyful Sun    5:34
05. I'm Speaking To You    2:22
06. Whereto    2:52
07. Anywhere That Is Not Here    3:58
08. Is Anyone There?    2:51
09. The Sky Is The Same Colour Everywhere    8:57

LINE - UP

                        

Kayhan Kalhor - Kamancha [Kamancheh] (The kamancheh (also kamānche or kamāncha) is an Iranian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument. The kamancheh is related to the rebab which is the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and the bowed Byzantine lyra. The strings are played with a variable-tension bow.   
Toumani Diabaté - Kora (The kora is a stringed instrument used extensively in West Africa. A kora typically has 21 strings, which are played by plucking with the fingers. It has features of the lute and harp.

NOTES

The album is divided into 9 tracks but plays as a continuous piece and is designed to be listened to in one sitting.

Flac Size: 289 MB

REMBRANDT FRERICHS TRIO & KAYHAN KALHOR - IT'S STILL AUTUMN 2019

                 

“In Iran, you feel that they are hungry for our music. You can therefore conclude that jazz is very

relevant,” said pianist Rembrandt Frerichs  in 2018 in an interview with the magazine Jazzism. Frerichs would know because he has played abroad a lot and he even lived in Egypt for a time. The pianist met the famous Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor (Teheran,1963) at a performance in 2013.
               

In the sound of the Iranian’s instrument (that is played da gamba), Frerichs recognized a great opportunity to add a new dimension to his own musical journey which in recent years had led him to

playing jazz on a fortepiano. Mozart used such an instrument to compose on. Bassist and violinist Tony Overwater and drummer Vinsent Planjer, with his self-designed whisper kit, have adjusted their playing to suit this new tonal ideal. The result is music with no boundaries that was recently recorded on the evocative album It’s Still Autumn.
                                      

Kayhan Kalhor, Rembrandt Frerichs, Tony Overwater, Vinsent Planjer – It’s Still Autumn
Label: Kepera Records – Kepera 74715
Format: CD, Album
Country: Netherlands
Released: Apr 5, 2019
Genre: Jazz, Folk, World, Ethnic
Style: Free Improvisation, Fusion

TRACKS
                   

DAWN           
01. Introduction    4:47
02. Dew Drops    3:48
03. Kayhan’s Chahar    8:48
04. Still    6:53
05. Offering    4:17

DUSK   
06. Introduction    8:10
07. Autumn    5:21
08. Autumn Winds    3:23
09. Long Story Short    9:20

LINE - UP

Fortepiano, Harmonium – Rembrandt Frerichs
Kamancha [Kamanche] – Kayhan Kalhor
Percussion [Whisper Kit] – Vinsent Planjer
Violone, Double Bass – Tony Overwater

NOTES

Recorded at Fattoria Musica Osnabrück, 10 - 6 November 2015.
The 'whisper kit' is an invention by Vinsent Planjer which combines percussion instruments of various cultures and epochs.

Flac Size: 482 MB

Toumani Diabaté on Urban Aspirines HERE

Roswell Rudd' s + Toumani Diabate : Mali Cool 2002

Roswell Rudd (born Roswell Hopkins Rudd, Jr. in Sharon, Connecticut, on November 17, 1935) is an

American jazz trombonist and composer.
Although skilled in all styles of jazz (including dixieland, which he performed while in college) and other genres of music, he is known primarily for his work in free and avant-garde jazz. Since 1962 Rudd has worked extensively with saxophonist Archie Shepp, a close friend.

The connection between Mali and the American blues (and therefore, for many, American jazz) is now accepted popular musicology, regardless of which side of the chicken-or-egg debate you might stand. Musicians on both sides of the Atlantic know it when they hear it, and the smart ones don't give a damn about ethnomusical origins.

Kora player Toumani Diabate has long understood the connections between the world's various

musical sounds, and has made his name in both traditional Malian music and in a wide range of cross fusions with Americans, Europeans and even Japanese musicians. On MALIcool he takes another step out on the edge, joining free jazz trombonist Roswell Rudd on a unique collaborative project that taps both players' unique ability to stand outside of the expected. In the liner notes Rudd makes much of how he was subsumed into the Malian musical culture, relearning how to play his instrument in the local style and such. But what you hear on MALIcool is really a cross-hybrid where all the musicians are so thoroughly absorbed in one another's music that the lines blur completely and beautifully.R
                                                                        

Joined by Lassana Diabate on balafon, Basseko Kouyate on ngoni, Sayon Sissoko on guitar, Sekou
Diabate on djembe and Henry Schroy on bass, the mood is decidedly cool and groove driven rather than melodically 'outside.' The arrangements are sparse, leaving everyone room to improvise (and not just the two leaders). This is exemplified in the opening cut, "Bamako" and the following "Rosmani," where Rudd's raw horn lines are elegantly wrapped by the kora and bass, Diabate offers a true blues-guitar style solo, Sissoko's guitar riffs like a kora and Lassana Diabate's balafon shimmers everywhere. On Rudd's sprawling "For Toumani" they head into harder, jazzier turf, with hand-struck snare drums and djembe and a throbbing bass line offering a driving rhythm over which the rest of the ensemble roars. The title track is pure swing, albeit with a balafon where Lionel Hampton's vibes might be expected to appear. There's a few odd turns, like their slowly evolving interpretation of Monk's "Hank," the swinging twist they give to an old Welsh folk song, or their brief, nutty take on Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," but most of the pieces are pure Rudd and Diabate, and therefore out of any specific tradition while still beholden to many.

Tracks:

1. Bamako ( This is one of the best Ethnic tracks in this blog )
2. Rosmani
3. Jackie-Ing
4. All Through The Night
5. Hank
6. Johanna
7. For Toumani
8. Mali Cool
9. Sena Et Mariam
10. Malijam


Roswell Rudd: Trombone
Toumani Diabate: Kora
Lassana Diabate: Balaphone
Basseko Kouyate: Ngoni
Henry Schroy: Bass
Sayon Sissoko: Guitar
Sekou Diabate: Djembe
Mamadou Kouyate, Dala Diabate: Vocals

Take it HERE