Past Programs
Sacred - 2008
Israeli Andalusian Orchestra (First Broadcast on 31/3/2008)
26/09/2008
With the soaring, inspiring voices of Emil Zrihan and Haim Luc, and an instrumentation that mixes Western strings with instruments played in North Africa, the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra’s CD Jerusalem is a powerful, celebratory recording.
This music reached Israel when Sephardic Jews immigrated from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, but in Israel’s early years their music was marginalised due to Israeli society’s focus on developing its own culture. Ironically, the massive immigration of Russian Jews, including large numbers of musicians, especially violinists, facilitated the formation of a large, Arabic-style orchestra. Moroccan-born musicologist and founder of the Andalusian Orchestra, Dr. Avi Eilam-Amzaleg, helped pull together the Moroccan and Soviet-born musicians by arranging and notating the arrangements for the Orchestra and composing many pieces based on traditional Moroccan-Jewish sources. But the singers are, with their big, generous and inspiring voices, the stars of this CD.
Adama Coulibaly
20/05/2008
Baba is a powerful, hypnotic recording of Malian musician Adama Coulibaly, who plays the donso ngoni, the hunter’s harp, and sings with all acoustic accompaniment.
Baba (a term of respect for elderly hunters) is the first release on Salif Keita’s Wanda Records, and Salif, who met Adama at Salif’s father’s funeral at the beginning of this decade, opens the album with a soaring tribute to his young protégé. The Coulibaly clan is a prestigious one in West Africa, producing an emperor in the 18th century and scores of highly respected hunters. Adama comes from a family of crop growers and hunters in a village near Mali’s capital Bamako, and began learning the donso ngoni at the age of 6. His studies with Sibiri Samaké, a musician whose lessons touched on geomancy and medicine, lasted for 20 years, exempting him from work in the fields and from attending school. The songs are, in West African tradition, moral lessons and the band is traditional as well, with Bolon (a bass lute), acoustic guitar, and calabash and karigan (a metal scraper) percussion in addition to Adama’s playing of his donso ngoni, an instrument regarded with great respect for its ability to communicate with the spirit world.
CD of the Week - Raphael Imbert
19/05/2008
On Bach/Coltrane, French saxophonist, composer and student of sacred music Raphael Imbert explores the connections between the spiritual music of Johann Sebastian Bach and John Coltrane, playing with a church organist and a string quartet.
Working on his premise that Coltrane is the only true mystic in the history of jazz, Raphael improvises on some of his lesser known compositions - Crescent, Song of Praise, The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost and Reverend King, and also on Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Recorded in a church with a bassist, percussionist, counter tenor Gérard Lesne, the Quatuor Manfred String Quartet and organist André Rossi, it ranges from the quietly devotional to the ecstatically exuberant.
Israeli Andalusian Orchestra
31/03/2008
With the soaring, inspiring voices of Emil Zrihan and Haim Luc, and an instrumentation that mixes Western strings with instruments played in North Africa, the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra’s CD Jerusalem is a powerful, celebratory recording.
This music reached Israel when Sephardic Jews immigrated from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, but in Israel’s early years their music was marginalised due to Israeli society’s focus on developing its own culture. Ironically, the massive immigration of Russian Jews, including large numbers of musicians, especially violinists, facilitated the formation of a large, Arabic-style orchestra. Moroccan-born musicologist and founder of the Andalusian Orchestra, Dr. Avi Eilam-Amzaleg, helped pull together the Moroccan and Soviet-born musicians by arranging and notating the arrangements for the Orchestra and composing many pieces based on traditional Moroccan-Jewish sources. But the singers are, with their big, generous and inspiring voices, the stars of this CD.
