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Leaf Music4.5
East is East
Infusion Baroque
Leaf Music, March 2024
An interesting musical proposal from Infusion Baroque. This Montreal-based ensemble’s new project is fully in line with its mission, which it pursues with perseverance and imagination: to attract new audiences to early music by integrating chamber music with other artistic media.
This conclusion can be drawn even from a preview of the tracks on this album, scheduled for official release in March 2024 after a successful participatory funding campaign.
The title itself is intriguing. It was inspired by The Ballad of East and West, a poem by Bombay-born British author Rudyard Kipling: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, /…But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, / When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!”
The idea behind East is East was to explore what a multicultural collaboration could achieve, bringing together ancient music performed on traditional and period instruments—a convergence of cultural roots: Persian, Indian and European.
The ensemble explores how these extremely different musical traditions might come into harmony with each other, to meet on common grounds. This ambitious program is executed by virtuoso artists: Vidita Kanniks, voice and arrangement; Amir Amiri, santur and composition; Hamin Honari, Persian percussion; Hank Knox, harpsichord; Thibault Bertin-Maghit, double bass; and Shawn Mativetsky, tabla.
Playlist
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