Idrîsî Ensemble: The Open Fund for Organisations
Merging sound installation, cutting-edge research, ancient Mediterranean traditions and experimental song, this concert is not what you expect. Idrîsî Ensemble brings together instrumentalists from around the world, jazz, rock and traditional music singers, calligraphers, composers, sound artists and medieval music specialists. Together they give voice to female troubadours, also called trobairitz, and resonate with their message. Neglected figures on the fringe of Christendom, their art spoke of alterity and mixity in Europe, of a people obsessed with exoticism, cross-cultural marriages and Hellenic lineage.
Idrîsî Ensemble developed a more ornate and microtonal form of singing for this repertoire, rigorously based on medieval treatises, pre-Gregorian and Mediterranean traditions. Reconciling a thousand years of art, and people from different walks of life, this inter-disciplinary project resembles contemporary London: it provides artists and audiences an opportunity to expand their aesthetical horizons, to explore new sounds, new ethical reflections, challenge institution expectations, be radically different, or radically themselves, together.