Aynur / Kayhan Kalhor / Ensemble Resonanz

The vocalist Aynur, who is Kurdish and Alevi, was born in East Anatolia in 1975 and is regarded as the leading figure of identification for the Kurdish diaspora around the world. This is a role she never wished for as an artist, but one that fell to her because of her progressive political position on women’s rights and against Turkish nationalism. Today, because of the hostilities in her homeland, the 48-year-old singer now lives in Amsterdam. Aynur’s voice switches with playful lightness between power and tenderness, between soft whispers and declamatory cries. Her artistic roots lie in Kurdish folk music, but her love of jazz shines through clearly in the arrangements and instrumentation of her music.

Kayhan Kalhor comes from the Kurdish part of Iran and his international collaborations played an important part in popularising Persian music around the world. He has previously worked with the New York Philharmonic and the Kronos Quartet. »Silent City« is an elegy to the chemical genocide perpetrated on the Kurdish civilian population of Halabja in 1988 towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Peaceful music about the horrors of war.