MOURN

FIGURE and Alkanna Graeca present MOURN, a musical-theatrical exploration of the experience of loss through the rituals of the Balkans and the music of 17th-century Italy. The performance examines the universal experience of losing a loved one and the ways we come to terms with death. Through music and song, unfolding in a series of poetic scenes inspired by ancient funeral traditions kept alive in the Balkans and reimagined in Italy, MOURN asks how we say farewell to those we love most.

In Renaissance Italy, composers drew on Ancient Greek tragedy to invent a new declamatory style that sits between speech and song. The funeral laments that were woven into those dramas became central to early opera, and the style spread across Europe. The 'lament bass' – a repeating, descending four-note line – was used in Germany by Biber, in France by Lully and, nearly 1000 miles away, in England by Purcell in Dido’s Lament. Had those Italian composers crossed the Adriatic Sea to the Balkans, they would have found the mourning traditions which were immortalised in Ancient Greek tragedy still in practice, forming an unbroken lineage with the past. There, the funeral lament, sung rather than spoken, endured as part of everyday life – delivered outward and upward to a community of the living, the dead, and the divine.

Historically informed performance ensemble FIGURE has been praised in The Times for its 'high-risk, high-reward' projects and in The Guardian as musically 'unequivocally impressive, its sound invigorating, its commitment absolute'. Alkanna Graeca is a vocal trio blending raw folk traditions from the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Black Sea with free improvisation whose 'spine-tingling harmonies and dissonances have reinvented ancient polyphony for a contemporary audience'. MOURN places the imagined tradition of Western Europe and the living tradition of the Balkans in dialogue, reconstructing a ritual of grief.

MOURN features traditional polyphonies from across the Balkans, including Albania, Epirus, and Thrace, as well as music composed by Claudio Monteverdi, Barbara Strozzi, and Carlo Gesualdo. The original concept was devised by Alexandra Achillea and Frederick Waxman.

Performers:
Alexandra Achillea, Irini Arabatzi, Dunja Botic‍ vocalists
Naomi Burrell, James Toll violins
Sergio Bucheli lute
Jan Zahourek double bass
Konstantinos Glynos kanun
Frederick Waxman chamber organ, music director, creative producer
Alexandra Achillea‍ stage director
Konstantina-Maria Spyropoulou‍ assistant director (movement and dramaturgy)

Photo credit: 'Nyx (the night),' 2019 by Ioanna Sakellaraki