‘Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI’

CONTEXT: 19:00 Meet the Artist: Jordi Savall

With this concert Jordi Savall and his Hespèrion ensemble XXI are paying homage to the Romanian tanbur player and composer Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723). In his day Istanbul, or Constantinople as it was then known, was the religious and cultural capital of the Muslim world. He dedicated his book Kitâb-ül ilm-il mûsikî (The Book of the Science of Music) to Sultan Ahmed III and it forms the basis of this concert for which Savall has selected a dozen works from the 355 compositions. He confronts Cantemir’s courtly repertoire with the traditional folk music of the Sephardic Jews and Armenians who had settled there.