Hayden Chisholm – sax
Kit Downes – organ
PJEV – choir
MEDNA ROSO is further magnificent proof of the unifying power of the global language of music. In the titled project – also their debut album (Red Hook Records 2021) – BBC Jazz Award winner and Mercury and German Jazz Prize winner Kit Downes unfolds a wide sonic panorama on the church organ, while New Zealand saxophonist and sound aesthete Hayden Chisholm builds bridges between tradition and avant-garde with microtonality, shrutibox, synthesizer and vocals. At the center are the voices of PJEV, a Zagreb vocal quartet that preserves the rich heritage of the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian a cappella tradition.
The fateful encounter between Jovana Lukić, the director of PJEV, and Chisholm in a kafana in Belgrade, as the traditional Serbian restaurants are called, resulted in a new and unique musical encounter between cultures. Chisholm, fascinated for years by the direct harmonies and physical intensity of Balkan singing, found in PJEV an ensemble that embodies ancient singing traditions with undisguised emotionality. Together they explore folk songs from different regions.
The magical core of the accompanying CD recording was created in September 2021 in Cologne’s Agneskirche. Downes’ organ sounds, Chisholm’s shimmering improvisations and PJEV’s earthy voices merged in the powerful acoustics to create a sound space that linked past and present in an incomparable way. “It felt as if we had suddenly been given large stork wings,” recalls PJEV’s Jovana Lukic. The result is a program that does not rely on effects, but on the power of breathing, singing and listening together – music that is as timeless as it is contemporary, full of mysticism, uplifting, fulfilling and breathtaking at the same time.
“Kit Downes was up in the organ loft, and saxophonist Hayden Chisholm and the five Serbian and Bosnian singers from PJEV performed the sequence of music from their Medna Roso album. There was a wonderful flow and dramaturgy to the whole sequence, starting with a quest, and exploration of strange sounds and timbres, and gradually building to a marvelous sense of affirmation. The album on Red Hook Records has been very well received, but this music is hauntingly unforgettable when heard live.”
(londonjazznews.com)
“This is a remarkable, stirring piece of work that works right into your bones.”
(Jennifer Kelly – Dusted)
“…your mind will be truly blown.”
(Songlines)
“Downes and Chisholm are not playing jazz or practicing ethnomusicology, and while their virtuosity is evident, nor are they showing off their chops. They are improvising in the contemporary style that relies on drones and bold, gestural playing, generally without reference to specific pieces or genres. They meet on equal ground with the singers, whose songs maintain their integrity even as they threaten to blur into the improvisations. The instrumental sections-with their monumental clamor, hushed chordal clouds, chest-rattling sub-bass, post-minimalist riffs, and electronic colors-almost never echo the melodies, harmonies, or rhythms of the songs, never attempt to sound like Balkan music. Instead they join in a shared sense of precise microtonal tuning, deploying oblique drones and patterns that highlight PJEV’s crystalline intervals. On this recording the idea of people with different ways of making music coming together to create something transcendent feels powerfully alive.”
(Ted Reichman – The New York Review)
