Concert "Asavari" in the Bingen Museum at the River, November 2nd, 2007
Short melodic fragments emerge from the harp, the tar contributes graceful, finely wrought lines, the horse head fiddle fills in the sound painting with melancholic harmony chords, and hovering above the instrumental textures soars a high humming voice with slight vibrato. The ensemble Asavari begins its journey through musical worlds from occident to orient as far as distant Mongolia in the composition "Pilgrimage" with pastel colors and a distinctive harmonious sound.
"World Music" has not established itself as a definable category of instrumental or vocal occurrences. Just the opposite: the notion resists categorization in the attempt to fuse musical elements or playing traditions of most divergent cultural horizons. How free and open spirited such an encounter can be is proven by Asavari formed around the multi-instrumentalist Gernot Blume from Bingen, and the percussionist Julie Spencer.
At the occasion of their premiere-concert in the Museum at the River in Bingen, the two internationally renowned artists teamed up with Enkhjargal Dandarvaanchig, a Mongolian master on the morin khuur, a horsehead fiddle, and Jamal Samavati, a Persian virtuoso on tar and setar, long necked lutes that due to their enchanting sound became the favorites of mystics and Sufis.
Two musical worlds based on completely different tonal foundations are confronted in the dialogues between contrabass and tar or morin khuur. No talk of "melting.". On the one side there is the occidental formation of harmonies, on the other side there are modal scales, and nonetheless the instruments work together. On the fiddle's two strings and with fingers simultaneously under and over the horse-hair strings, Dandarvaanchig magically produces diverse timbres from a dark, rough desert blues to "smeared" and free sounding tone clusters. The instrumental play is accentuated by acrobatics with larynx and throat, resulting in over- and undertone singing, the ability to jump effortlessly from pressed high register sounds to rough-sounding vocal depths.
Despite all the exotic cleverness, the final result sounds nonetheless familiar and adds itself exquisitely to the Persian art music, which defines its aesthetic concept in the unfurling of a mode's melodic beauty, the surrounding and the varied repetitions of a central pitch. These sound paintings are complemented by the timbral palette of Gernot Blume's accordion, mandolin, nyckelharp, guitar, bass, and harp, rhythmically pulled together by Julie Spencer's work on cymbals, tabla, frame drum, and African djembe.
Asavari stands out with its unique concept, and thanks to the virtuosity of its internationally experienced members, from countless other world-music or cross-over projects. This music is "world-jazz" in so far as there is much room for improvisation next to notated parts. Some pieces are launched from the starting point of composed heads that are then improvised on by the soloists or the collective ensemble. Pointing beyond the boundaries of jazz is the fact that Asavari also performs pieces such as "Mongolian Rap."
Perhaps contemporary, free, and already Eastern-influenced forms of jazz could also enter the ensemble's music in the future.
