Stock: 
Format: 
Release Date: 25-10-1998
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Catalog Number: 15031-2
Barcode: 13711503128
Musical Style: World
Track Listing:
| Disc 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction-John the Baptist at the River [08:13] | 10 | Soldier Kills the Page [01:46] |
| 2 | Men's Dance With Herod [03:16] | 11 | John's Compassion and Vision of Harmony [05:46] |
| 3 | Herod and Herodias [04:44] | 12 | Chaos! [02:14] |
| 4 | Women's Dance [04:15] | 13 | Herod's Drunken Dance [01:53] |
| 5 | Soldier and Page [01:40] | 14 | Herod's and Herodias' Argument [03:47] |
| 6 | Salome's Entrance [04:36] | 15 | Salome Dance For Me [04:11] |
| 7 | Shadow Dance [03:06] | 16 | Salome's Dance [04:14] |
| 8 | Salome Demands to See John the Bapist [01:54] | 17 | Herod's Ecstasy [02:27] |
| 9 | John the Baptist and Salome [04:38] | 18 | Salome With the Head of John the Baptist [04:48] |
Description:
Michael Askill teams up with choreographer Graeme Murphy for a second dance production with The Sydney Dance Company. After the successful theatrical collaboration on Free Radicals, the pair was eager to continue the new direction of their respective arts and explore further the blurring boundaries between dancers and musicians - dance and music. The dark story of Salome, the infamous daughter of Kind Herod, has fascinatinated many for centuries. Her equally infamous dance with John the Baptist's head is the setting for the music composed by Michael. Salome is the original score for this evocative production featuring Michael Askill and percussionist David Hewitt playing a variety of bells, gongs and drums (on stage they are accompanied by the dancers) and pre–recorded pieces with Faruk's chanting which evoke a sensual, evocative atmosphere and combined create an ancient Middle Eastern ambience. Michael Askill has created a contemporary fusion of haunting vocals and mystical flutes with rhythms and percussion sounds inspired by the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Voice is used to symbolize John the Baptist while instruments represent the voice of the other characters, such as the ney flute for Salome, the zurna (a wild kind of oboe) for Herod and the use of instruments for the drunken harem. The music has an incredible richness to it - which is quite deceptive when you think of the [limited] resources we have to do it - and a very different feel to anything we have done before.' (Graeme Murphy) 'It's great having the dancers as musicians - they have no fear of picking up instruments and hitting them and they have no problem understanding musical language. It is very wholistic having them threaded through the story and the music and it gives us a fuller sound and more variety in the music produced on stage.' (Michael Askill)'
Biography:
Producer and composer Michael Askill is regarded by many as Australia's finest percussionist. He is a founding member and the Artistic Director of Australia's premier contemporary ensemble Synergy, a composer, producer, the Head of the Percussion Department at the Canberra School of Music and finds time for collaborations and a solo career. By his teenage years, Omar Faruk Tekbilek was one of Turkey’s most sought after session musicians. A virtuoso performer on the Near Eastern cane flute (ney) and the Turkish lute, (baglama) Tekbilek was in demand in both jazz and traditional Turkish/Arab music circles. Along the way, he has mastered several kinds of reed instruments, a variety of strings (bowed and plucked), synthesizer, hand drums and even the accordion. In 1976, he settled in upstate New York. Since then, his music has appeared regularly on concert stages, recordings and films in the United States, Europe and Australia. In addition to a thriving solo career, he has played with a wide range of other musicians, from the late Don Cherry to pianist Michael Harrison’s Mandala Jones, a band that draws on the poetry of the great 13th century Sufi poet Rumi.
«Go back to Celestial Harmonies
