Two years ago, members of the Constantinople musical collective arrived at The Banff Centre for a residency to develop a new work.
Now, that piece they created – a mix of baroque-style music and poetry called Early Dreams – is coming home. Constantinople will present the work on Saturday (March 2) at 7:30 p.m. in the Rolston Recital Hall.
Kiya Tabassian spoke on behalf of the group.
“(Early Dreams) is based on the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz from the 17th century, Mexico,” he said. “She was a great woman of that time, a great poetess and philosopher and musician and singer.
“But there is no trace of her music apart from a few small pieces, so we took her poetry and some instrumental music of that period and we created new songs based on basso continuo – it’s sonata-based, in which the singer or instrumentalist improvises and builds new melodies. We took the basso continuo of that period and we created new songs with her poems.”
It is a concert that presents the baroque music of Mexico with a creative approach, said Tabassian.
“In the ensemble there are instrumentalists from different backgrounds – each of them bring their own colours and musical vocabularies,” he said. “I play sitar, which is a Persian instrument. There is for sure some colour and musical vocabularies that comes from the Persian music into the ensemble.”
Born in Tehran in 1976, Tabassian emigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 14. He now calls Montreal home. His brother, Ziya, is also in the group.
“There’s a Spanish baroque guitar player, and then there’s viola da gamba and percussion, mainly from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, and the voice,” said Tabassian. “The singer with us – Irasema Terrazas – this is her premiere in Canada. She’s a great singer from Mexico.”
When Tabassian started thinking about the project three years ago, he went to Mexico to interview singers to represent the voice of Sor Juana.
“She was recommended by many friends, and I met her, but then she got pregnant and couldn’t come to the residency,” he explained. “Now for this tour we decided to invite her to do this project finally with her.
“The ensemble is touring a lot in Europe, the U.S., and in different parts of the world, and Canada is very important to us. It’s our home country, we’re based in Montreal, and we try to more and more be present in Canada.”
Bringing this piece back to the place where it was first worked upon is something very special for the ensemble, said Tabassian.
“Banff is a very special place for all of the ensemble, because we did a few residencies there,” he said. “Some of the musicians did individual residencies too, and it’s a very inspiring place for all of us, so to bring back this concert finally, since we created it in 2009 we’ve toured it in many places around the world, it’s special to bring it back to Banff and is very interesting for us.”
The Banff Centre is a very inspiring place, he stressed.
“The Banff Centre is a mixture of many things, the geography, the spirit that’s present in that place, everything is really perfect to be creative and to focus on our art,” he said. “It’s a very inspiring place for us.
“Last year we were there, and had two guests – percussionists from Turkey and Israel – and they were also in love with this place – so it’s really inspiring for everyone that goes there.”
The ensemble takes its name from the fact that the city of Constantinople, now called Istanbul, stood at the crossroads of the world, and was traditionally the division between east and west.
“We are an ensemble, more than 10 years old, and we are always in projects at the crossroads of different traditions and different musical periods,” said Tabassian. “That’s why we call the group Constantinople – it’s traditions of Middle Eastern, European, Mediterranean – and we also work a lot with New World music – Mexican baroque or even New France music, with new music or old manuscripts of seventeenth century music.
“It’s a creative ensemble that creates with these encounters between musicians and traditions of different periods, from old to contemporary music.”
After the performance, the members of Constantinople will hold a question and answer information session with the audience.
