A TIME BETWEEN BIRTH AND CHAOS

Description

A celebration? A misappropriation? A revolution? This instrument, the qanun (a 78-string zither invented by Al-Farabi, Persian philosopher and musician, 872), is perfectly mastered by Symo Reyn; he is a virtuoso. He reinvents, even revolutionizes it. How to renew the sound processing of the qanun, the only polyphonic instrument in oriental music? By inventing a new language for it, by enriching its vocabulary. This also involves new instrument making: a special sensor manufactured by Symo Reyn himself that captures sound waves and transforms them into magnetic signals that pass through electrical wires. A dozen pedals control the whole system. There is a lot of tension in this music, which draws from several sources (Henry Purcell, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich, Nils Frahm, Björk) to better find its own path. Very organic, it organizes its own chaos. Beauty of gesture, rhythmic precision, melodic richness—this is music that is at once very written and spontaneous, deep and luminous, intense and intimate, delicate and mysterious, singular and familiar. Franck Médioni