Wu Man, pipa, Feras Charestan, qanun, Abbos Kosimov, doira
Arranged from folk sources by Wu Man (b. 1963)
“Teahouse” is an homage to the sound of the traditional silk and bamboo
instruments played in teahouses in Wu Man’s hometown area of Zhejiang
Province, in China’s southeast. Not long ago, Wu Man taught the
quintessentially Chinese pentatonic melody of “Teahouse” to qanun player Feras
Charestan, who embellished it with his own improvised counterpoint. The
beautifully integrated sound of the two instruments seems so natural that a
listener could be excused for thinking that pipa and qanun have always been
played together - and indeed, in a sense, they have. The pipa traces its ancestry
to the Persian barbat, the short-necked lute with a bent scroll that may well have
also provided the prototype for the Middle Eastern oud, and the melded sound of
lutes and zithers is at the very center of traditional music from Iran and the Arab
lands.
Wu Man is an acclaimed performer on the pipa, a four-stringed Chinese lute with ancient
roots that, due in large part to her efforts, has become a leading instrument of
contemporary music in both East and West. Wu Man performs both traditional and
contemporary music on the pipa, and many new works have been commissioned specially
for her. She was a founding member of the Silk Road Ensemble, and has played an active
role in cross-cultural music making, in particular with members of China’s Uyghur
minority.
Feras Charestan is from the city of Al-Hasakeh, in the northeast of Syria, and studied
qanun at the High Institute of Music in Damascus. He has performed as a qanun soloist
with symphony orchestras and has been a member of popular bands as well as
contemporary music ensembles, creating new music rooted in Middle Eastern traditions.
Feras Charestan currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden.
Abbos Kosimov was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, into a musical family. A disciple of
the honored Uzbek doira player Tuychi Inogomov and winner of the Competition of
Percussion Instruments of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Kosimov established his own
doira school in 1994 and his ensemble, “Abbos,” in 1998. Kosimov performs
internationally with Zakir Hussain and Randy Gloss’s percussion group Hand’s
OnSemble and recorded with Stevie Wonder.