Beyond the Borders brings together the Greek singer Maria Farantouri and the Turkish saz and kopuz player Cihan Türkoğlu, who has lived in Athens for about a decade. Their programme mixes traditional songs from Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Armenia with new songs by Türkoğlu, set to words by the Greek writer Agathi Dimitrouka. The title states the idea. Songs from countries that face each other across the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean are sung here as a common inheritance, in Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian and Ladino.
Farantouri, once called "the Callas of the people", is known above all for her work with Mikis Theodorakis. On ECM she had sung on Elegy of the Uprooting with Eleni Karaindrou and Athens Concert with Charles Lloyd. After hearing Türkoğlu she proposed the project to the label. The ensemble includes German cellist Anja Lechner, Armenian kanon player Meri Vardanyan and ney player Christos Barbas from Thessaloniki. Percussionist İzzet Kızıl grew up with Sufi rhythms in eastern Turkey. Manfred Eicher helped the new group shape the material, and it was recorded at Sierra Studios in Athens in June 2017.
The album opens with Drama köprüsü, a Macedonian folk song whose story Türkoğlu begins in his low voice and Farantouri completes, over frame drum, saz, ney and kanon. In the Sephardic song Yo era ninya, from the Jews of Smyrna, her contralto and Lechner's cello form a close blend. Türkoğlu's Ta panda rei sets Heraclitus's saying that everything flows, carried by a repeated saz pattern. Elsewhere there is Wa Habibi, a Good Friday hymn sung in Lebanon and Syria, and the record closes with Kele kele, an Armenian song preserved by Komitas.
In Jazzwise, Jane Cornwall heard songs "of yearning, rootlessness and notions of home" and a "healing spirituality that feels more essential than ever". Maria Lord, reviewing it for Songlines in 2019, wrote that Türkoğlu's new songs "stand up well alongside the ones from traditional sources". She also found the contemplative mood a little uniform. The ensemble made its live debut at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, as part of the Athens Festival.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2585, released on 21 June 2019.
