Mountain Tale
Music like a symphony, the most unique voices program of the world
About the project
Mischa Alperin:
"The story of this project has its own tiny prelude, to my mind a rather mysterious one, which I would like to share: Some time ago, around 1995, I developed a vision of a family where the father would be from Tuva, the mother Bulgarian, the daughter a Russian, and the son Jewish. The very idea might have been nothing more than a funny whim, but then, all of a sudden, I pictured this family as a musical one, not consisting of professional musicians, but a family where ...
Then I didn't get any further with my vision. Instead, I started collecting musical material and writing scores for some non-existing future project. These, then, would be the ingredients of the salad to come: The Bulgarian Women's Choir - "the mother", overtone singers from Tuva - "the father", the Moscow Art Trio, with the Russian soul of Sergey Starostin and my own Jewish melancholy. Luckily, at the time I wasn't about to think of it as a concrete, pre-programmed plan. I was just playing with the idea. Until the producer, Uli Balss, of JARO, Germany, phoned me unexpectedly to suggest that we work on two disks with my Moscow Art Trio and subsequently the "Bulgarian-Tuvan project" of which we had been dreaming, not he, strange as it may seem. Needless to say, I immediately hurled myself at the task. Some dreams do come true.
A few words about the project itself: For a long time I had been studying the common denominator of meditative structures in various folkloristic forms of expression.
For instance the Russian tradition of lengthy songs. A similar mood and similar colors might be found in Tuvan songs of the steppe, and is also reflected in the musical landscape of folk songs from the Radopi region in Bulgaria, as well as in many Jewish songs. That's why, in the beginning, I named the project "Meditation" as a working title - in an attempt to stay away from any "modernization" of folk song themes, but instead unite different folkloristic sources in the vision of a bird's flight.
Should I try to capture in words the essence of this project, I would do so in terms of a small scene that got stuck in my mind: I remember en elderly couple dressed in black on a small island in Greece. They were looking out across the sea, into the distance, motionless, and time stood still. During rehearsals, singers who had never seen each other before and were at first glance utterly remote from each other as far as cultural roots are concerned, began suddenly and spontaneously to perform their forefathers' songs for their "alien" colleagues, as though discovering this possibility for themselves right then and there. Each began to pick up intonations, modes, and moods of songs stemming from seemingly infinitely distant areas. The family were coming together, getting to know each other as though after centuries of separation." Misha Alperin
From the Altai Mountains to the Balkans and to the Yennisey
The great migration of peoples and the dissolution of the Roman Empire marked the end of antiquity and the birth of the European civilization of the Middle Ages. The Balkan Peninsula was one of the regions on the continent where the dramatic clash between the Old World and the barbaric tribes was sensitively felt. In the course of several centuries its makeup has changed radically due to ethnic, social and economic and political processes of unusual effect.
The Slavs and the Old-Bulgarians played an important role in these processes. In the beginning of the sixth century the Slavs inhabiting the territories to the North of the Danube river started periodical attacks on the territories of the Byzantine Empire and nearly a century later they had occupied almost the entire Balkan peninsula. As a result, the local population of Mizia, Thrace and Macedonia was gradually assimilated by the new settlers.
The Old-Bulgarians belong to the Turkic-Altaic language group and ethnic community. Initially they inhabited the territories of Central Asia and in the 3rd - 4th centuries they migrated to the North of the Caucasus. During the following centuries, as a result of the great migration of peoples, the Old-Bulgarian tribes moved to the west and merged their beliefs closely with those of the tribes and peoples of East and Southeast Europe.
While the Old-Bulgarians moved westward from the Altai mountains, the Tuvans, who originally also inhabited this area, migrated to the region of the upper Yennisey, one of the mighty rivers of Siberia flowing into the Arctic Sea. They, too, are members of the Turkic-Altaic language group but belong to the Mongolian tribes and they have much in common with the other Central Asian tribes of the region. Many were recruited to participate in the marches of the "Golden Horde" under Genghis Khan after he had conquered Tuva in 1207. Tuva was occupied by Mongolia and China before coming under Russian control in 1912. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917 Tuva proclaimed itself an independent republic (Tanna Tuva) and finally became part of the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Today Tuva belongs to the CIS.
Angelite The Bulgarian Voices
These phenomenal Bulgarian voices first performed in Germany in 1987 in the city of Bremen. In the years that followed, an unprecedented career took them around the world - from Alaska to Japan, from Mexico to India. They have sung at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo (1996) and for an Indian maharajah, have collaborated in concert with Japanese Kodo drummers and produced fascinating recordings with overtone singers of Tuva. They recorded Orthodox Church music as well "Balkan Passion" a project with many internationals guests as Maria Farantouri, Sezen Aksu, Fanfare Ciocarlia or a Austrian TV production “ Voices of God” with André Heller. In 2002 they performed with Nuernberg Symphony Orchestra and together with Bobby McFerrin von ZDF Classic Open Air in Leipzig.
Choir-conductor : Georgi Petkov
Born in the town of Gabrovo on the 24th of April, 1961 in a family of traditional musicians. He finished secondary music school and in 1986 graduated from the Music Conservatorium in Plovdiv with the specialty of "Choral Conductorship". Since than he has worked as a conductor and chief conductor of many of Bulgaria's finest choirs and has toured with these groups throughout Europe. Georgy Petkov is regarded as one of the leading young composers in Bulgaria. His compositions are included in the albums of various internationally acclaimed groups.
Moscow Art Trio
The Moscow Art Trio is one of the most exciting formations of New Jazz. Next to composer Misha Alperin - who considers himself "a sort of improvising pianist" there is Arkady Shilkloper, an academically trained hornist and folk singer and clarinetist Sergey Starostin. For the trio the borders between jazz, folk and classical music have become irrelevant. With a playful sense of humor, elements of highly differing origins have been processed into something completely new. As the Frankfurter Rundschau remarked, "Alperin's compositions cannot be classified according to genre . . . they owe as much to Bartok and Schnittke as they do to Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett."
With Misha Alperin JARO was able to contract one of today’s most creative wanderers between jazz, contemporary classical and folk music. In the center of his work as a composer and performer, is the Moscow Art Trio, founded in 1990. Alperin was born in the Ukraine in 1956 and grew up in rural Bessarabia in the eastern part of Moldavia. He played with folk musicians while also studying composition and piano .Alperin moved to Moscow in 1983 where he met the French horn and flugelhorn virtuoso Arkady Shilkloper. Alperin began, experimentally, to cross-reference elements of the Russian and Romanian folks musics of the Moldavian region with his subjective understanding of the jazz tradition. Since 1993 Alperin lives in Norway and teaches at the Norwegian State Academy of Music. He has become a central figure in the new improvised music of the Far North. Alperin also undertakes projects with other musicians and he plays solo piano. He released several albums with ECM Records. He composes film music, music for ballets and has made arrangements for the intercultural project with Huun-Huur-Tu and Angelite. Misha Alperin is the artistic director of the project Mountain Tale.
Huun-Huur-Tu
The Tuvan ensemble HUUN-HUUR-TU's incomparable overtone or throat-singing, originally developed by the steppe people, is one of the most fascinating vocal techniques known. It allows the singer to sing up to three tones simultaneously. The songs are accompanied by traditional instruments. In the USA, where they have been invited to collaborate with the Kronos Quartet, Frank Zappa, the Chieftains and L. Shankar, their success was overwhelming almost immediately. Tuvinian culture resembles the Mongolian culture showing a deep respect for nature. The music has a ritual character, meditative passages are underlayed by strong rhythmical structures. All in all there is a mysterious quality to HHT´s music which remains consistent in their recordings and performances. HHT have devoted themselves to learning old songs and tunes, their performances reflect the values of innovation as much as tradition.
Tuva: this is the name of a remote region, far away from the familiar route of civilization in the center of Asia. The autonomous republic of Tuva, ringed by mountains and deserts (population: 300.00 ) is part of the new formation of countries lead by Russia.
Press Headlines:
’… This happy concert demonstrated, with frequent touches of sly humor, a joyful fusion that can take place when musicians from different traditions join forces, helped by an inspired facilitator, in the hope that a whole might emerge which is
more than the sum of its parts.’
Journalist Peter Grahame Woolf after the concert on 7.12.2001 in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
’Alperin deserves gratitude for putting these riches together so well.’ Los Angeles Times, 13.1.1998
` ... In my opinion this project should continue. It is a big beautiful occurrence and I would like to work together with the project in future´ Stevie Wonder in the wardrobe after the last concert on 6.12.1997 in Los Angeles
`The soaring, strident heights of Bulgarian song and the creaking depths of the Tuvan throat couldn't be more different - but when they joined, it was amazing - redemptive, divine’ Music Express, 12.12.1997, San Francisco
CDs of the project:
FLY, FLY MY SADNESS (JARO 4197-2)
MOUNTAIN TALE (JARO 4212-2)
LEGEND (JARO 4300-2)
