A sonic journey to a fierce and dusty land KRONOS QUARTET WITH THE HOMAYUN SAKHI TRIO At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday. November 5
A What's remarkable about rubab V virtuoso Homayun Sakhi's
music is not the skill with which it's played, but the way it sounds exactly like his native land. The higher forms of Afghan music take clear inspiration from their North Indian relatives. The two unnamed pieces Sakhi and his band performed on Saturday night both borrowed the structure and pacing of a typical raga, building from a slow alap to a frenzied demonstration of string-bending pas sion. And although percussionist Ab hos Kosimov's frame drum, the doyra, is of Uzbek extraction, his stage-right counterpart Salar Nader's tabla looked identical to what you' d find on any Kolkata or Mumbai stage. But the music Sakhi and band pro duced was drier, dustier, and fiercer than most North Indian sounds. Some might miss the perfumed nuances of the sitar and sarod, but the rubab's quick decay demands a more physical and less languid approach-which perfectly suited Sakhi's sonic extro version, and the harsh conditions of life on the Afghan plateau. This intense immersion in the spirit of place followed a set from the Kronos Quartet that was all over the map, although in the best pos sible way. Again, what makes Kronos special is not its members' collective ability but their collective curiosity: they're willing to try anything, al though it does help that they're gen erally capable of pulling it off. Saturday's program found them sailing through the intricately woven strands of National guitarist Bryce Dessner's impressive Aheym; deliv ering their own tribute to the North
VANCOUVER INTER-CULTURAL ORCHESTRA
Indian tradition with a haunting ar rangement of the alap from sarangi master Ram Narayan's Raga Mishra Bhairavi; negotiating the off-kilter tempos of Syrian wedding singer Omar Souleyman's La Sidounak Sayyada; conjuring rembetika icon Marika Pap agika's mournful voice on the trad itional ballad Smyrneiko Minore; and venturing into outer space for Mon treal composer Nicole Lizee's electron ically assisted Death to Kosmische. At times, various members of the group shed their strings to pick up a small harmonium, a Middle Eastern goblet drum, a droning tamboura, an Omnichord, a Stylophone, and a mysterious, dial-encrusted box that looked for all the world like a space-. age anglerfish. Like the program itself, Kronos's sounds were crazily eclec tic-and held together by the quartet's infectious passion for exploration. After two such wildly different delights, the seven musicians' col laboration on Sakhi's Rangin Kaman was almost a letdown. Almost, but not quite. Although the piece is less deliriously inventive than Kronos's usual fare, and not quite as focused as its composer's trio work, it proved a gorgeous blend of European and Central Asian sonorities, marked by intense ensemble rapport and ending with a rousing inyocation of hope for Afghanistan's future. "What do you do after that?" asked Kronos violinist David Harrington, after acknowledging the crowd's standing ovation. Well, for an encore, the seven musicians smiled at each other and dove right into Bob Dylan's "Don't Think '.fwice, It's All Right", as arranged for quartet (but not Af ghans) by Philip Glass. Frankly, it was terrible; even virtu osos need to rehearse. But that they' d attempt it at all was, in some weird way, as much of a giddy pleasure as everything that had come before. > ALEXANDER VARTY
"music that sounds like Vancouver looks" - The Georgia Straight
ORCHESTRAL EVOLUTION Gala 10th Anniversary Concert LAUDATE SINGERS
''
0 sweet night of love! Destiny binds me to you forever. · ''
With special 9uests
Saturday Nov. 12, 2011 at 8 pm Norman Rothstein Theatre Tickets ($28/$18) via vi-co.org or call 778-881-5499
NOVEMBER 26 - DEC 3, 2011
www.vi-co.org
VANCOUVER OPERA
vancouveropera.ca
Celebratin9 10 Years
ifMusical Innovation
FRENCH OPERA AT ITS MOST ROMANTIC
QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE I 604.683.0222
VANCOUVER
(eJElr:.�
I
-=GoLocoRP
NOVEMBER 10 - 17 / 2011
SEASON SPONSOR
THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 59