Shahriyar Jamshidi: My Sunset-Land ROJAVA
Shahriyar Jamshidi

Kamancello: Of Shadows
Kamancello

Cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne and kamanche player Shahriyar Jamshidi generate a particular kind of magic through their Kamancello collaboration, and Of Shadows is no exception. The Toronto-based duo recorded the set live at Union Sound Company in April 2016, with the material, as with previous Kamancello releases, wholly improvised and unedited. Interestingly, Of Shadows could have been titled Kamancello III: Voyage II, given that the release's 2019 predecessor also featured live material from that 2016 date.

As before, the level of telepathy between the two is remarkable; as impressive is how convincingly the six improvisations on the forty-six-minute (digital-only) release could pass for live treatments of formally composed pieces. Though both observations were made of the earlier releases, they bear worth repeating when they apply as strongly to Of Shadows. Weinroth-Browne's playing is marked by finesse and refinement, but he's also capable of giving his sound a rawness to match the sonorities of his partner's four-stringed spike-fiddle.

There are many things that make Kamancello's music appealing, its propulsive drive for one. Bookending the recording, “Beyond the Gate” and “Towards the Inevitable” push forward with determination, the players' instruments coiling around one another and conveying ecstasy. In “The Rider” and elsewhere, the two show themselves masters of call-and-response, a strategy that naturally works effectively in an improvised context when it helps lend structural coherence to a performance. It doesn't hurt either that the respective cry produced by their instruments invites comparison to the human voice, settings such as “To Mourn” and “Dance of Shadows" benefiting in that regard when the supplications expressed by the two are so powerful. That both instruments can be bowed and plucked also allows for a presentation richer in contrast and dynamics than it might be otherwise.

Admittedly, Of Shadows doesn't depart dramatically from the sound and style of the first two Kamancello sets, but I'm betting fans wouldn't want it any other way. This latest chapter again offers listeners a chance to swoon, leave the world behind, and bask in the glow of the duo's transcendent sound.

In addition to partnering in Kamancello, both musicians have released solo albums, with Weinroth-Browne's Worlds Within issued in early 2020 and Jamshidi's arriving four months later. Like the cellist's, his My Sunset-Land ROJAVA (available in digital and CD formats) shows that the music the two create can be just as compelling when presented individually. Much of Jamshidi's professional energy has gone towards the preservation and transmission of the Kurdish musical heritage, and My Sunset-Land ROJAVA is consistent with that. The release structures itself around the story of a nomad from Kurdistan, who creates a song when she stops to take a nap before resuming her journey; one presumes, then, that the nine pieces are intended to represent the material she's written during her travels. Additional detail accompanies a few tracks. Jamshidi titled the opening “Viyan,” for example, in memory of Viyan Peyman (birth name Gülistan Tali Cinganlo), a Kurdish-Iranian teacher and folk singer who joined the resistance fighters in Syria but lost her life while fighting ISIS in 2015.

With only a single instrument in play, the sound is generally sparse, which bolsters its intimate quality. Multi-tracking is downplayed for the sound of the kamanche played in real-time (a seeming exception is “Tears of Singal (Sinjar)” where multiple instruments resound). It proves to be enough: as earlier noted, the instrument's vocal-like cry lends itself perfectly to a sorrowful setting such as “Midnightish,” but it's able to convey joy too; in prefacing its fiddling with an oud-like intro, “Dersim” also illustrates the range of sounds that can be sourced from the kamanche.

August 2020