Konya find me? I'm Haydn

Today was our last rehearsal before the day of our Istanbul concert next Tuesday with the Dunya Renkleri Korosu. This will be MFTP's most polished and vibrant "crossover" project yet. Thanks to the brilliant arranging skills of the DRK folks, the violin, viola, and cello blend seamlessly into their thoroughly Turkish ensemble. They've thoughtfully created opportunities for us to improvise and take the spotlight, even though we are hardly expert in their music.

Additionally, they expressed such a fervent desire to play our music that I took the slow movement of a Haydn duet for violin and cello and created a reduction that eliminates all of Haydn's ornaments. Then, I gave the reduction to the DRK's violin and kanun players, asking them to ornament it in the Turkish style. Though it took as long for them to feel comfortable with improvising in our style as it took us to get used to theirs, by this point the concept presents a fascinating juxtaposition of the way Haydn ornamented his own melody two centuries ago, and the way a pair of first-rate Turkish musicians would ornament it today.

We bade them a temporary farewell as we flew to Konya to accompany a Sufi whirling dervish ceremony. It is rare for female musicians to accompany the sema, and even more rare for American musicians to do so. Over the next three days of intensive rehearsals, we look forward to learning as much from the Sufi musicians as we can before we accompany their sacred ceremony in the city of its origin, in the city where its creator (Rumi) died, and on the eight hundredth anniversary of his birth.