This performance was originally staged together with Turkish musician Ihsan Özgen (kemençe, tanbur, co-director) on November 12, 2000 under the auspices of the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, in co-production with Arts & Lectures, and the released on CD through Golden Horn records in 2004. The program presents some of the finest works of the Prince Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723) in the varied contexts of his cultural world -- a world which arises in the crossroads of Western and Eastern thought, in the collision of Europe with the Ottoman Empire, and at the junction of Byzantine culture with Islamic theology.
Cantemir was a royal Moldavian linguist-encyclopaedist-composer who through curious fate spent 22 years as a diplomatic guest of the Ottoman Court. But Cantemir clearly preferred music to politics, and was sufficiently gifted to play his way to fame as the greatest of classical Turkish musicians. Lux Musica performs Cantemir's Classical Ottoman compositions preceded by taksim preludes, a new improvisational genre in his time; and where appropriate modal relationships are explored in collective taksim improvisations as well, a contemporary experiment in preluding pioneered by Ihsan Özgen. In addition to Cantemir's compositions, the concert also includes traditional Moldavian tunes such as he might have heard back home at his wedding, and European alla Turca reflections of Ottoman music played in Baroque style.
Finally, works by Yalçin Tura and Lou Harrison show Cantemir's continuing impact on Eurasian composition and performance in our time. Linda Burman-Hall and Lux Musica look forward to reviving this unique production in Washington, D.C.
An article about this unique collaboration and Lux Musica's upcoming travel to the nation's capitol has appeared on the UC Santa Cruz News website:
http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=3011
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