Divine Art Records has announced its latest signing which will result in the release in early summer on the Metier label of a fascinating album of music inspired by the sounds of the Near East, performed by the Resident Artists of Cuatro Puntos. Each track comes from a personal collaboration or association between Cuatro Puntos musicians and composers or other musicians from the Near East region. The tracks are arranged roughly by their origin on a path beginning in India and concluding in Egypt. The disc opens with Jaunpuri (Morning Song), a composition by Cuatro Puntos musician Kevin Bishop. It is inspired by a personal association with two special Hindustani classical musicians while they were all living in Afghanistan. At the center of the album are Reza Vali’s Love Songs and Calligraphies No. 1-3, based on traditional Persian modes. Sandwiched between these works is another by Kevin Bishop – this one a suite of Afghan tunes on which he plays the zerbaghali. Next is a piece gifted to Cuatro Puntos by Sadie Harrison, composer of the recent Rosegarden of Light album. It is based on the oldest known written piece of music, found in Syria and dated to 1400 BCE. Concluding the album are pieces by Israeli American composer Gilad Cohen and Egyptian composer Mohamed Aly Farag, both of whom began relationships with Cuatro Puntos after their pieces were chosen from an international score call.

Cuatro Puntos is a non-profit organization based in Hartford, Connecticut, USA dedicated to intercultural dialogue and universal access through the performance, writing, and teaching of music. Cuatro Puntos oversees a resident chamber music ensemble, a concert series, the Music Moves Hartford program for underserved Hartford populations, and, recently, a partnership with the Müzikhane Social Music School in Southeastern Turkey.  The Cuatro Puntos Resident Musicians, hailed by Fanfare Magazine as having a “great depth of sound” and a “virtuostic performance”, have performed extensively throughout the United States as well as in Bolivia, Brazil, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Afghanistan.

A four-year collaboration with Afghanistan’s only music school, which included several teaching artist visits to Afghanistan and a one-year teaching tenure by Cuatro Puntos’ executive director, resulted in a collaborative album between Cuatro Puntos and the Afghanistan National Institute of Music titled The Rosegarden of Light. The album was released on Toccata Classics and has received critical acclaim worldwide as well as airplay on major stations such as BBC and NPR.  Music from the album has also been used on the score of several films, most recently in The Staging Post and Laila at the Bridge. Blackmore Vale Magazine in the UK said “At a time when we are bombarded every day by images of the world in crisis, The Rosegarden of Light is a joyful celebration of musicians who share a fundamental right to express themselves through the universal language of music.”    

Jaipur to Cairo

Métier Records MSV 28589
Recorded at Hartt School, University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA on
22-24 March 2018
Producer: Kevin Bishop.  Engineer: Justin Kurtz

Works

Kevin Bishop: Jaunpuri
Reza Vali: Three Love Songs
Kevin Bishop: Afghan Suite No. 2
Reza Vali: Calligraphies
Sadie Harrison: The Oldest Song in the World
Gilad Cohen: Ten Variations
Mohamed Aly Farag: Rhapsody for piano and strings

Artists

Cuatro Puntos Resident Artists:
Mohamed Shams (piano)
Kevin Bishop (viola/zerbagali)
Charles Huang (oboe)
Aaron Packard (violin)
Annie Trépanier (violin)
Steve Larson (viola)
Allan Ballinger (cello)
Andrew O’Connor (double bass)