heliopausa

Hesperion XXI and Jordi Savall and Monserrat Figuerras and all of them have given so much to me as a listener over the years. I have heard them at several different concerts at different Adelaide Festivals, and have spoken with the (late and much-missed) astonishingly lovely Montserrat Figuerras after a concert one night, as she walked back from the Adelaide Town hall to her hotel - she was most wonderfully gracious and warm and open-hearted. As indeed was Jordi Savall one time in St Peter's Cathedral, when he let a little knot of admirers gather around his viol de gamba, and look at it. He was perceptibly anxious in case some sort of barbarism or idiocy might emerge, but gentle and courteous and willing to trust us. Just mindblowing loveliness and generosity.

And last night Hesperion XXI presented in Sydney The Jerusalem Project, and are doing it again in Melbourne tomorrow and then Wednesday, using Jewish, Christian and Muslim music to express "the dream of Jerusalem shared by the faiths: a holy ideal transcending walls of stone and the city's tumultuous history."
From the review:
...the most moving, exquisite vocal and instrumental sounds to be heard this side of heaven, including the gentle enchantment cast by Savall's own viol and rebab. Two recordings are deftly interwoven: Shlomo Katz's heart-rending Hymn To The Victims Of Auschwitz and one by soprano Montserrat Figueras, Savall's late wife.

To have Israel's Lubna Salame and Palestine's Mahmud Husein singing together in the finale makes one's breast ache with hope.

I'm aching with wonderment that people can do so much with music.