Balkan

The Ergon Ensemble continues its musical voyage around our key musical heritages, maintaining its focus on the people who draw both their inspiration and their sound world from tradition.

Tonight, they will set off in search of the common denominator underlying the spatial and temporal continuity of the ‘Balkans’, as well as the differences that term encompasses.

The Balkan peninsula is where several of the world’s cultural tectonic plates meet, and the area has always been a melting pot of ethnicities, languages and culture whose coexistence and conflicts have actually necessitated, rather than preventing, the sharing of information and experiences which created the multicultural mosaic we find today.

Interpreted here by contemporary composers employing the wealth of timbres and techniques available to them, tradition —which includes the concept of continuity— is rendered intriguingly multifaceted. Imbued with a range of emotions, their music’s non-European underpinnings, asymmetrical rhythms and peculiarities of melodic line and performance make for a challenging and fascinating musical experience.

The concert will be preceded by a short presentation of the works by the composers and an open discussion.