Gurdjieff Ensemble – Gorani: music about resilience and melancholy

A ritual concert exploring Armenian mourning music and spiritual traditions. Through dirges, medieval mystical poetry and folk songs, the Gurdjieff Ensemble explores the movement from loss to resilience. Gorani is a ritual around grief, remembrance and resilience. Central to it is the Gorani, an Armenian mourning dance that emerged as a response to collective tragedy. The dance is sometimes performed backwards - against the natural direction of time and celebration - as a symbolic gesture of resistance against loss. The music moves from a slow, meditative atmosphere to the lively tamzara dance, in which grief gradually gives way to movement, breath and renewed connection. In this program, Levon Eskenian and the Gurdjieff Ensemble reinterpret this tradition through a soundworld of Armenian spiritual music, dirges and medieval mystical poetry. Works by among others Gregorius van Narek, Nerses Shnorhali, Khachatur Taronetsi, Mkhitar Ayrivanetsi, Simyon Yerevantsi and Komitas, as well as the spiritual hymns and prayers of G. I. Gurdjieff, are interwoven with anonymous folk songs from the oral tradition. The internationally acclaimed Gurdjieff Ensemble, described by The New York Times as 'powerfully hypnotic', brings together leading musicians who play traditional instruments from Armenia and the Middle East.