The Silk Route in Image and Sounds

Music formula: Osuna Trio

During an Osuna concert, you can experience sounds Marco Polo may have heard on his eastbound travels during the late Middle Ages. Three musical personalities meet each other: Thomas Baeté, medieval fiddle player and singer of troubadour lyrics, Emre Gültekin, saz-virtuoso, who grew up in the Anatolian music tradition and Raphael De Cock whose fascinating overtone-singing and chatkhan-playing bring the steppes of Central Asia alive. These three repertoires come to unite through a shared modal language, a common sense of refinement of ornamentation and modulation, and through a cyclical time experience. The “estampies du roy” are 13th century dances originating from Western Europe that were taken to the Middle-East by the Crusaders. We hear them alongside a traditional hypnotic Anatolian dance called the Zeybek. The Mongolian overtone singing may also have been heard at the borders of Europe when Genghis Kahn’s troupes reached the Donau in the early 13th century.

Music+Visual SandArts formula: "Zandmuze" Colette Dedyn & Osuna Trio

For this production, premiering in ARTONOV (2016), OSUNA teams up with sand artist Colette Dedyn; a long awaited collaboration! Her sand art is the perfect visual compliment to OSUNA’s music: the projections of her life drawn in the sand provide a larger canvas for the audience’s imagination. The soundscape of Marco Polo’s voyages are now completed by a landscape to assure a complete experience that is both poetic and exotic. The natural beauty and architectonical interest of those regions form the basis of Colette's visual art...