The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

This is a quite beautiful album that once again brings tradition and modern music together without compromising either.

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While Sokratis and Keerim have an association that spans almost two decades having played together on the lyra player’s two quartet albums for ECM, Eight Winds (2015) and Metamodal (2019), this is their first duo recording in a program that features original compositions alongside Béla Bartók’s ‘Romanian Folk Dances’.

In a seemingly contradictory manner, the album’s title Topos can mean home or homeland, but the music that is inextricably linked to Sinopoulos and Keerim’s background in Greek folk music become a multi-cultural journey that passes through Hungary, Romania and the Balkans. Sinopoulos’s use the traditional Greek instrument the 3 stringed lyra transcends any notion that the instrument may have a limited range, or musical vocabulary is quickly dispelled.

Indeed, the duo bring a wide dynamism and expressiveness to their musical partnership that is quite breath-taking in the all too brief ‘Mountain Path’ and further expanded in the haunting and delicate lyrism of ‘Forest Glade’, both composed by the duo as are the opening ‘Vlachia’ and ‘Valley’.

Interestingly, Bartók’s six ‘Romanian Folk Dances’ were recorded in the studio as one long performance in which the duo was able to expand and open the music to allow for spontaneous improvision within the individual folk dances.

What is truly captivating is the way the duo work together, with the piano and lyra coming from different traditions and musical cultures to find a shared approach to the compositions. The emotions in Bartók’s music run deep from the sombre ‘In One Spot’ to vibrancy of ‘Romanian Polka’ and the dancing rhythms from both lyra and piano to the expressiveness and complexities of ‘Fast Dance’.

This is a quite beautiful album that once again brings tradition and modern music together without compromising either. An album that could equally have found a home in ECM’s New Series catalogue this is music that is alive with fine compositions and improvisation in a perfect marriage, and all performed with passion and conviction.

(https://jazzviews)