In Persian, a Qalandar is a wandering ascetic. Here, Qalandar is a cycle of pieces for two, three or four instruments where non-tempered singing and contemporary writing for the piano merge, adorned at times by cello or clarinet improvisations. With their poems and their saz (long-necked lute), the, Anatolian bards expressed passions in many forms, sacred and profane. I in turn have attempted to make these poems mine, through the voice of the Istanbul-born singer Gülay Hacer Toruk, weaving essentially a cloak of 20th c. harmonies around the lines of these poems. (Renaud-Gabriel Pion)
