DUO Salgar
Heselton
Merve Salgar est musicienne istanbuliote, et interprète d'un instrument traditionnel: le tanbur (luth à long manche). Zoe Heselton est musicienne et poète Britannique-Français— elle joue la guitare et chante. À partir de leurs instruments et de leurs voix, elles cherchent à tisser ensemble un maillage de chants et de jeux où se rencontrent repertoires traditionnels, poèmes, improvisations et compositions, parfois en turc, parfois en anglais, parfois simplement dans la langue des cordes.
Our new album Health To Your Hands is now available on bandcamp !
Recorded in September 2019 at St Pancrace Church in Dangolsheim, France over the course of a three-day residency curated by inventor and musician Léo Maurel, "Health To Your Hands" is Merve Salgar's and Ross Heselton's first collection of recordings as a an improvised and traditional music duo for tanbur, voices and guitar.
Drawing on their different influences and backgrounds to weave their repertoire, the album ties paths between the blues and the folk music and poetry of Ireland and Britain and those of the Ottoman Empire: here threading together the taksim of the tanbur with the cry of the bottleneck slide guitar, there drumming the words of Dylan Thomas to the rhythm of the tef, or yet making resonances between the the songs of Turkish troubadour Aşık Veysel and traditional Irish folk ballads.
Playing with an sensitivity to improvisation and a shared attention to silence and space, the instruments call, respond and entangle, disappearing into drones to make ground for one another, or singing in unison to become one.