For the first time ever in Dublin …

AN EVENING OF SEPHARDIC & PERSIAN MUSIC

Sunday June 7 and Monday June 8, 2009, 6.30 PM.
Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College Dublin

Performed by Judith Mok (soprano) and Laurent Galili, with Nick Roth (sax), Oleg Ponamarov (violin), Francesco Turissi (percussion), Simon Jermyn (guitar), and Cora Venus Lunny (violin).

‘My Heart is in the East, and I in the uttermost West’ wrote the great Spanish Jewish poet of the 11th century, Judah Halevi. From Babylon and Baghdad to Cairo and Cordoba, Jews and Muslims lived alongside one another and experienced mutually enriching cultural encounters.

Medieval Jews knew their beloved Spain as Sepharad. Here poetry and music flourished and when the Jewish community was expelled in the 15th century, they took their Sephardic ballads with them to their new homes. Settling across the eastern Mediterranean, from Turkey and the Balkans to North Africa and the Holy Land, this music of loss and longing absorbed local musical influences, to produce this incredibly rich variety of Sephardic music. For some years now the Dutch soprano Judith Mok, who is herself of Sephardic descent, has been exploring this unique musical heritage.

Laurent Galili, one of the world’s leading exponents of Persian music and its special instrument, the Santour, will be playing pieces that include The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This will be performed in Persian, and also in the famous English translation by Edward Fitzgerald, who was of Irish descent. The Santour, a hammered dulcimer, has been played in Persia for thousands of years, and is the predecessor of our Western piano. Laurent Galili was trained in his native Iran, and he will be joined by virtuoso performers from jazz and classical backgrounds.