In Search of the Miraculous

'In Search of the Miraculous' presents a kind of musical Fourth Way by drawing together East and West, experimental and avant-garde, ambient, minimalist and improvisational traditions. With such... — Gramophone Magazine, July 2013 More…

Release Date: 11th Mar 2013
Catalogue No: LCMS1301
Label: Louth Contemporary Music
Length: 62 minutes

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Say: Black Earth

Work length7:58

Elisaveta Blumina

Sharafyan: Ter, vor i mej le-rinn

Work length3:23

The Hilliard Ensemble

Rabih Abou Khalil: Dreams of a Dying City

Work length12:59

EQ Ensemble

Alan Hohvanness: To Hiroshige's Cat

Work length7:20

Elisaveta Blumina

Surman: Mimosa

Work length4:16

EQ Ensemble

Say: Princess of Lykia

Work length10:11

John Feeley, Pavlos Kannellakis

Sharafyan: Tsov Kentsaghuis

Work length5:49

The Hilliard Ensemble

Cleary: Chaconne

Work length5:22

Elisaveta Blumina

Surman: Leylek Geldi

Work length5:25

EQ Ensemble

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At the core of In Search of the Miraculous, with music by Fazil Say, Alan Hovhaness, Vache Sharafyan, Siobhán Cleary, John Surman and Rabih Abou Khalil, is a search for unity. The album’s various and varied parts come from as far apart as Lebanon and County Sligo in Ireland, but they share a passion to excavate deep into the musical material, as if to reveal its inner spirit. In this enchanting disc, distant musical cousins - both composers and performers - are brought together to reveal their common ground as much to complement each other through contrasts.

Ireland’s EQ Ensemble strikes a balance between formal restraint and ecstatic release in Mimosa and Leylek Geldi by the English saxophonist and composer John Surman, and in Rabih Abou Khalil's soaring Dreams of a Dying City, which itself evokes its Lebanese composer’s celebrated oud playing.

The Russian pianist Elisaveta Blumina brings both strong statements and mere whispers to the album, from the declamatory first chords of Turkish composer Fazil Say's Black Earth to the Armenian-American Alan Hovhaness's expansive work To Hiroshige's Cat and Sligobased composer Siobhán Cleary's reflective, searching Chaconne. A different side to Fazil Say is glimpsed in his work for two guitars Princess of Lykia, deftly performed by John Feeley and Pavlos Kanellakis.

The revered English vocal group the Hilliard Ensemble provide a different shade entirely, with the mysterious and captivating works of Vache Sharafyan from Armenia. Helped by the measured intensity of the Hilliard’s voices, as well as subtle, almost concealed, electronics, Sharafyan ellicits a beguiling texture in which the text of The Sea of Our Life is Troubling Me is magnified through song.

Reviews

July 2013

'In Search of the Miraculous' presents a kind of musical Fourth Way by drawing together East and West, experimental and avant-garde, ambient, minimalist and improvisational traditions. With such a mix of styles on display, it's maybe no surprise that not every piece strikes the right chord, but the hits are greater than the misses.

23rd March 2013

A wacky pot-pourri — mixing East and West, ancient and modern...Not quite miraculous, but enchanting.

In Search of the Miraculous

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