Broken Branches
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DOWLAND / HARVEY / CACCINI / BRITTEN / TRADITIONAL / etc
Broken Branches
Karim Sulayman (tenor), Sean Shibe (guitar)
[ Pentatone / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 5 May 2023
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Tenor Karim Sulayman and guitarist Sean Shibe present Broken Branches, a conceptual album with music ranging from Dowland, Monteverdi, Britten, Rodrigo, Takemitsu, Harvey, and Chaker to traditional songs from the Middle East, scrutinizing the close cultural and musical ties between East and West. This musical exploration ties in with the artists' personal experience of a dynamic, in-between identity, as they grew up in the West having ethnic roots in the East (Lebanon and Japan respectively). Broken Branches explores the wood of the guitar and its relatives, as well as the splintering of history known as diaspora. Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist, and won a Grammy Award for Classical Solo Vocal in 2019. Multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar, while also exploring contemporary music and repertoire for electric guitar. He continues his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE after his well received Camino(2021) and Lost & Found (2022).
"Shibe brings a lively charisma and a vibrant array of musical colour to the album, conjuring everything from 17th-century lute to Arabic oud across this wide-reaching programme. Sulayman's performance at times feels too restrained, but his interpretation of Britten's Songs f rom the Chinese ha s a wonderful piquancy and dynamism, and brings this thoughtful release to a rewarding close." BBC Music
"It's a thoughtful and idiosyncratic project, one carried through in several arrangements and realisations by the two musicians that blur the line between song and art song into something broadly 'folkish'." Gramophone
"an eclectic album, built on friendship, which explores the performers' own sense of identity, memory, diaspora, often in their own arrangements...Sulayman, a Lebanese-American singer, light-voiced and flexible, brings intensity to traditional Sephardic song, and new inflections to John Dowland, Claudio Monteverdi and Benjamin Britten (his six songs from the Chinese)." The Observer
Nominee - Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Grammy Awards
66th Awards (2024) Nominee - Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Tracks:
John Dowland (1563-1626)
Audio Player
1) Time Stands Still
5:30
Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012)
2) Sufi Dance
2:18
Giulio Caccini (1551-1618)
3) Dalla porta d'oriente
3:24
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
4) Sì dolce è'l tormento
4:27
5) La mia turca
2:16
Traditional Sephardic
6) La prima vez (arr. Sean Shibe & Karim Sulayman)
3:58
Arab-Andalusian muwashshah
7) Lamma bada yatathanna (arr. Sean Shibe)
2:24
Sayed Darwish (1892-1923)
8) El helwa di (arr. Sean Shibe & Karim Sulayman upon Ronnie Malley's arrangement)
3:33
Fairuz (b. 1934), after Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999)
9) Li Beirut (arr. Sean Shibe & Karim Sulayman)
4:08
Layale Chaker (b. 1990)
10) A Butterfly in New York
4:43
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
In the Woods
11) I. Wainscot Pond
3:29
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Songs from the Chinese
12) No. 1 The Big Chariot
2:00
13) No. 2 The Old Lute
2:47
14) No. 3 The Autumn Wind
1:25
Audio Player
15) No. 4 The Herd-Boy
1:30
16) No. 5 Depression
2:06
17) No. 6 Dance Song
1:16
