Indian Ragas & Medieval Song

The tenor Dominique Vellard is an outstanding figure in the performance of early and Renaissance music, while Ken Zuckerman is probably the best-known Indian musician of Euro-American origin (and a star pupil of the late sarod legend Ali Akbar Khan). For this album, recorded as a live studio performance, Zuckerman also plays the medieval lute and the Indian dotara (a two-stringed lute), teaming up with tabla maestro Anindo Chatterjee and Keyvan Chemirani, who plays the Iranian zarb (wooden drum) as well as ghatam (Indian clay water-pot drum). Given that both Zuckerman and Vellard teach on the medieval programme of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (a Switzerland-based university of early music) and both have also been strongly influenced by numerous Eastern music traditions, it's no surprise that this album is rather more substantial than straightforward fusion. It works as much by juxtaposing (rather just than merging) two distinct classical music traditions, uncovering some very interesting aspects of both – the modal music of the European Middle Ages and the classical music of north India. For those uninitiated in either Indian or European modal music, the similarities may not immediately jump out. But the overlaps are nevertheless truly stunning: in particular the Gregorian chant on ‘In Omnem Terram’, made even more beautiful by being followed – almost without a gap – by the extremely rare ‘Raga Lankadahang Sarang’. It all reaches a wonderful crescendo on track eight, ‘Jehannot de l'Escurel’, with Indo-Persian percussion underlying Vellard's rich voice.