Ethno2 Contest Highlights: What were your favorites?

Hello, all.

Please let me join Jacques, Francois, and others, and
congratulate again all who participated in and made possible the
Ethno2 contest. It seems appropriate for me, as we look forward
to the "Ethno Extras" project exploring the tunings and modes of
musical cultures familiar and unfamiliar of this and other
planets, to mention a few musical highlights of the contest which
have especially attracted my attention and provided inspiration
for us all.

At this point I should beg pardon if it would have been better
for me to have joined some established thread for this purpose
rather than starting a new one -- and at the same time to join
Jacques and Francois and others in inviting other people to join
in celebrating the composers, performances, and pieces together
making this contest such an exciting and productive event.

Singling out these particular pieces is done with the very major
caution that I am still downloading and digesting others, for
example those of Cameron Bobro, so this quick list is anything
but exclusive! And Cameron, thank you for a most insightful
remark on the virtues of the _descending_ semitone as a fine
cadential motion, something that has long captured my imagination
in medieval and Renaissance music of Western Europe, but can have
special ramifications in the traditions of Eastern Europe on
which you have helped to educate me, and also, of course, the
maqam music which influences these traditions.

First, I would like to congratulate Ozan Yarman on his most
artful _Nishabureyn Peshrev_, noting that my English spelling
reflects the limit of my ISP's e-mail environment on supporting
character sets -- although they've done an upgrade, so I should
check this out anew!

The mood of this beautiful Ottoman piece reminds me a bit of the
14th-century Italian instrumental genre known as the _Istampita_,
literally a "stamp dance" (like the earlier French _estampie_),
but in fact what I might now term a kind of written-out taksim,
where some scholars have suggested a Near Eastern influence.
You bring to this piece an intimate knowledge of the repertory,
the artistry to act on that knowledge, the technical saavy to use
Ethno2 to best effect, and a sensitivity to the fine points of
intonation, including the value of AEU as a _subset_ of Turkish
intonation, but not the whole!

My enthusiastic kudos to Naomi O'Sullivan for _Indo-ko-tulu_, a
very creative and beautiful adaptation of the Ethno2 quechua.scl
to a gamelan-like style. The textures, rhythms, and contrapuntal
interweavings are enchanting! It's fascinating how a South
American scale seems to have certain "pelog-like" features -- and
you've made the most of them.

Chris Vaisvil, your journey to _Socotro Island_ provides an
example of how the languages of world music can travel, and lead
to some interesting borrowings and "translations." Just as Ozan
Yarman often draws on the harmonic vocabulary of European music
as an element of his own style, so you have drawn on a
traditional modal type of Iran music, Dastgah-e Afshari, to
launch your own exploration into what I might call a kind of
modal jazz. Miles Davis is curiosly one very pleasant association
that comes to me, as I wrote in an earlier post.

Speaking of creative stylistic mixtures and borrowings done from
a confident stance of artistic integrity, what better example
could there be than the music of Shaahin Mohajera? Shaahin, I
much enjoyed your "Micro" pieces for the Ethno2 contest focusing
on the material of Segah, Shur, and Homayun. Well have you earned
the recognition of the Ethno2 judges for orchestration, something
also wonderfully illustrated in _Rebellious Music_ and _Cyrus the
Great_, for example. As I attempt to learn and improvise in a few
gushe-s of the vast radif, would that I could muster a tenth of
the musicianship and spirit that you bring to composing and
performing alike.

This is a very partial list in both senses: I have so far sampled
only a limited portion of the impressive collection of music
generated through this contest; and I definitely have my
stylistic "partialities" and preferences which draw me toward
certain pieces. The more we share our personal
highlights of music from this contest, the more representative a
picture we may get, as participants and listeners, of how our
community is growing and creating, with Ethno2 as a means and a
vital catalyst.

With warmest thanks to Jacques, Francois, and all,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...