At Bourgie Hall on Saturday, the Constantinople ensemble, founded by Kiya Tabassian, reunited with tenor Marco Beasley for a project, Il Ponte di Leonardopreviously presented in Calgary and Toronto and, soon, in Germany.
The programming ofIl Ponte di Leonardo is part of the 20and Constantinople season. The rare magic felt during this evening highlights the major contribution of the Kiya Tabassian ensemble not only to our musical life, but to the image of excellence of the metropolis and Quebec projected internationally. by such inventiveness and expertise.
A dense crowd thronged to the Théâtre Maisonneuve when Jordi Savall and his musicians of all backgrounds came to present Jerusalem, thea city of two peaces in 2010 and Ancient Venice, Gateway to the East 770-1797, in 2017. This public interested in this crossbreeding of cultures and the broadening of our musical horizons must know that what is being done here, in this area, is of the highest level. Kiya Tabassian and Constantinople, who also export their expertise and their biography, now attest to concerts in 240 cities in 54 countries.
The bridge joint
Il Ponte di Leonardo proves that all this is not wind. It is an evening of high international level, by an ensemble that fits perfectly into our musical offer, which the spectators have witnessed.
The subject ofIl Ponte di Leonardo is as follows: “In 1502, Leonardo da Vinci drew up the plans for what would be the largest bridge in the world at the time, and this, in Istanbul. […] 500 years after Da Vinci’s death, the concert brings his unfinished project to life in music and rebuilds the bridge he dreamed of between East and West. »
To do this, Kiya Tabassian uses musical works taken from manuscripts of the 16and and XVIIand centuries of libraries in Istanbul and Florence. The principle is to create groups of West-East musical dipoles that respond to each other. Like Jordi Savall, Tabassian composes the interstitial music that is missing and he can therefore recreate, right in the middle of the program, the “joint of the bridge”: a moving vocal dialogue a cappella with Marco Beasley singing verses in Italian and Kabassian blending his voice to (unmentioned) texts by the Persian poet Rumi.
The whole conception possesses this supreme delicacy of the spirit, well beyond the musical listening or the very subtle nuances and the irresistible excitements. Once the meeting of the cultures carried out, ie in the musical groups of the second part of the program, there is not a Persian poem dressed in music that Beasley, the Westerner, does not resume after Tabassian. The effect, with this voice which remains powerful and superbly timbred, even if the Italian singer is now 65 years old, is that of an amplification of the subject.
The quality of all the instrumentalists, the bursts of light instilled by the kanoun (Turkish zither) of Didem Başar, this intense spiritual fusion of the group was the direct answer to a question that we launched in The duty of October 14, 2021: “Why are we going to the concert? What experiences are we looking for? These questions have not since had more striking, obvious and brilliant answers than on Saturday.
Upcoming gigs: From Castile to Samarkand April 9 and Iran sky June 11.