Love songs, troubadours, minstrels and Persian song

Laurence Brisset, voice and organetto
Estelle Nadau, Eugénie De May, Caroline Tarrit, voice
Taghi Akbhari, Persian song
Navid Saeedi , târ
Bruno Caillat, percussion

Duration : 1h20

Works by Beatriz de Dia, Jaufré Rudel, Uc de Saint Circ, Adam de la Halle, Guillaume de Machaut and others. Improvisations.

The singers of the Ensemble De Caelis invite the Iranian singer Taghi Akhbari and the târ player Nader Aghakhani to debate the arts of love. Their two musical arts, two of the most sophisticated of the mediaeval world — traditional Persian song and Western song of the 12th to the 14th centuries — engage in musical dialogue.

The refined vocal art of Taghi Akhbari reacts and responds to the love songs of the troubadours and minstrels as well to the polyphonic works of Guilllaume de Machaut as he improvises on texts by the Persian poets Khayyâm and Rûmî.

Ghazal is a style of courtly poetry that was often sung and that flourished in Persia during the 13th and 14th centuries. Sensually coloured, its use of metaphor linked earthly with spiritual love.

Trained since his youth in the refinements of Persian song, Taghi Akhbari’s education was oral in character and passed on directly as tradition demanded. Even now he practices his art each day according to tradition by creating improvisations based on the works of Rûmi and Omar Khayyâm.