David Dalle
Thursday November 30th, 2023 with David Dalle
An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene; Canadian multiculturalism at its best with Constantinople and Afarin Mansouri.

It seems that ever since the great Kayhan Kalhor started performing with Shujaat Hussain Khan in the late 90's, I've come to expect Persian artists as being some of the most culturally adventurous and flexible. This expectation has continued to be borne out, especially with Persian-Canadian artists, such as the extraordinary ensemble Constantinople, led by Kiya Tabassian, which has really explored multicultural musical encounters in many unique ways. The first half of today's show will focus on Constantinople's 2022 album "In The Footsteps of Rumi". For this album Constantinople is joined by Tunisian singer Ghalia Benali in a journey of poetry by the great Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi in both Farsi and Arabic. Some of these pieces features duets in Arabic and Farsi by Ghalia Benali and Kiya Tabassian. This may surprise people who are not well-versed in music of the Arabic and Persian worlds, but Arabic and Farsi are almost never sung together. In fact, I cannot even think of any other music which features both together. Constantinople on this album features Persian, Turkish, and Arabic musicians. This is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary albums by Constantinople I have heard, a very crowded field! We will also hear a new album from Iranian-Canadian composer, singer, and pianist Afarin Mansouri. Her new album features songs for diverse instruments and voice based on divine and secular love poetry of Rumi, Hafez, Saadi, and others. The music is performed by the Thin Edge New Music Collective and Iranian-Canadian musicians Padideh AlurarJejad on tar, Ali Masouli on percussion, and vocalist Milad Baheri. Mansouri's vocal training is Western-Classical, and Baheri's is Persian classical, so their duets are some of the most absorbing music on this wonderful new album. In the second half of the show, we will hear Frank Horvat's new album "An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene", his terrifying and hopeful sonic exploration of climate change and humanity's degradation of this Earth. It was commissioned by the SHHH!!! Ensemble, a piano and percussion duo made up of Ottawa's Edana Higham and Winnipeg's Zac Pulak. The work features recordings of the human and natural world recorded by Frank Horvat in a dialogue with piano and percussion. It features 24 movements in four parts: Causes, Symptoms, Solutions, Outcome. Horvat collaborated a lot with SHHH!!! during the composition, and they had to decide whether it would culminate in a pessimistic or optimistic ending. They decided on the latter, with a serene and hopeful ending.