Good Evening. 

It’s an honour to be joined by all of you and by the extraordinary musicians assembled here. What a beautiful setting for spending these moments together!

I’ve had a love affair with traditional music from childhood, for the ways it can express the most subtle realities that exist just beyond words. The When Paths Meet concert series is born from that love, and I’m delighted to share this music with you now in Paris. 

It’s my belief that the best way to know another culture, another people, is to listen to its music. For music holds sacred memories, stories of the heart, and dreams for the future. The compositions performed here paint a portrait in sound of this extraordinary way of coming to know one another.

In tonight’s concert you’ll hear instruments from lands stretching from China to West Africa to France. The music draws at times on Middle Eastern modal and rhythmic systems, at times on the intricate geometry of Baroque music. Some works evoke awe at the majesty of creation; others echo the pure love that flows through the heart of all things. At its core are rich, nuanced, and profound musical languages that are among the great artistic expressions of humanity.  

It's an honour to work with each of the brilliant musicians present here on stage.

Please give a round of applause for the Scoring Orchestra de Paris.

… For the Métaboles

It’s a great pleasure to introduce some of the solo instrumentalists whose talent and skill bring the compositions to life:

Ballaké Sissoko from Mali on kora

From France:

Antoine Morinière on classical guitar
Nicholas Mackowiak on harpsichord
Eléonore Fourniau on hurdy gurdy

And

Loriane Llorca on the organ

This organ, on which Loriane performs brilliantly, is an astonishing work of art and science in itself. It was designed to complement the architecture of the Philharmonie de Paris.

And please welcome the outstanding musicians of my international ensemble:

The vocalists:

Nabyla Maan from Morocco
and Ilyos Arabov from Uzbekistan

The instrumentalists:

Mohammad Jaberi from the UK playing daf
Ömer Avci from Türkiye on percussion
Eyüpcan Açikpazu from Türkiye on ney
Onur Cicin from Türkiye playing qanun
Huseyin Can Pala from Türkiye on baglama
Hasan Hekimoglu from Türkiye on oud
Mahyar Toreihi from Iran on santur
Magsad Azizov from the Republic of Azerbaijan on balaban
Malik Mansurov from the Republic of Azerbaijan on tar
Ruven Ruppik from Germany on percussion

and 

the illustrious Guo Gan from China via France on erhu 

Huge thanks to the Philharmonie de Paris for making event this possible.

And my deep thanks to all of you. By your presence here you help to keep the beating heart of this music alive.

You’ve heard three of my new works thus far:

‘River of Paradise’ where hypnotic melodies of the kora flow and join voices of many instruments as it tells its story of love and longing.

‘The Journey’ came from my dream about music as the common language between travellers on the Silk Road. It is meant as a journey in sound across lands and cultures.

And ‘Meditations on a Musette by Couperin’, which opens with the work that inspired the piece, is then re-imagined in the Turkic Segah modal system of Central Asia, which closely parallels the major scale of Couperin’s piece. Kora and choir bring transcendence from another dimension, as this exploration of musical languages concludes.

And now we turn to the final composition, ‘L’Amour Vivant’. The French lyrics are drawn from the French mystic, Thérèse de Lisieux; Turkish words are by the 14th century poet Kaygusuz Abdal; and Arabic words are by the 12th century Persian sage Suhrawardi. It is, simply put, a declaration of love for all the traditions heard here – from European Baroque to the baladi rhythms of Arabia, from Central Asian maqams to the sweet sounds of the West African kora and the Chinese erhu.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the concert.

It’s been an honour performing for you all.