Continental Drift with Keyvan Chemirani & Friends

What happens when you blend the music of the old European masters with the breathless virtuosity of contemporary Persia and the Mediterranean?

Collaborators/soloists: Keyvan and Bijan Chemirani (Persian percussion) and Sokratis Sinopoulos (lyra fiddle)

Keyvan, Bijan and Sokratis are exceptional musicians: intuitive, agile, inventive. Together they explore the connections between the music of Baroque Europe and the Eastern musical traditions of the same era; the results are astonishing, shedding new light on history, music and our perceptions of both.

For Continental Drift, they’ll join Scottish Ensemble musicians for a performance bonding east and west, learning and improvisation, intuition and precision, freedom and control. Seated around the stage, this is a chance not only to experience the impressive mastery of multiple instruments at close quarters, but to enter a brand new sound world, created next to you, in real time; a world of melodic warmth, rhythmic verve, playful energy and exotic flair.

Keyvan Chemirani learnt the zarb (Persian drum) at the hand of his father, the internationally-renowned zarb virtuoso Djamchid Chemirani, with whom he and his brother Bijan still perform as part of the Chemirani Ensemble. For this concert, Keyvan and Bijan will play the zarb whilst their friend and collaborator Sokratis Sinopoulos takes up the lyra fiddle, a small bowed instrument from Greece.