Blue as the Turquoise Night

The quality of this album comes as no surprise when you discover that it has close connections to Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble and New York’s Brooklyn Rider string quartet. There are five pieces and although it’s nominally a classical album, much of the music is close to the diverse traditions that have inspired it.

The album has a strangely stuttering start with ‘Balkan Bollywood’, a piece by Ismail Lumanovski, clarinettist of the New York Gypsy All Stars. It prominently features the composer on clarinet, Tamer Pinarbasi on kanun (zither), Kayhan Kalhor on bowed kamancheh and Sandeep Das on tabla and presumably the vocal percussion, plus other members of the five-strong New York Gypsy All Stars. The second piece, ‘Atashgah’, was composed for Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider by Colin Jacobson, one of the quartet’s violinists, and was inspired by a Zoroastrian fire temple in Isfahan. It’s a substantial piece here in a version for kamancheh and string orchestra conducted by Jacobson’s brother Eric Jacobson. The main piece, the four-part Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur, was composed by Kayhan Kalhor for the Silkroad Ensemble, and also appears here in an orchestrated form. It is full of sonorous and tingling string harmonies, plus solo cello, kamancheh and tabla. Different in character are ‘Aaj Ki Raat’, an RD Burman Bollywood composition with swooping violin lines arranged for tabla and strings by Osvaldo Golijov, and the closing ‘Butcher’s Air’, a Balkan tune given a Latin makeover and a funky bassline by The New York Gypsy All Stars. A remarkable collection of pieces well-worth returning to.