Click
to buy |
"Dance Into
Eternity "
A
"best of" collection assembled by WNYC "New Sounds"
host John Schaefer of the works of Omar Faruk Tekbilek. There
are cuts from each of the six collaborative releases with Brian
Keane, Suleyman The Magnificent,
Fire Dance, Beyond
The Sky, Whirling, Mystical
Garden, and Crescent Moon,
as well as Faruk's early recordings and other collaborative recordings.
Track
List:
1.
A Call To Prayer
2. Imaginary Traveler
3. Sisler
4. Ayasofya (Saint Sophia)
5. Song Of The Pharoahs
6. Hasret
7. John The Baptist and Salome
8. Crescent Moon
9. Gawazi
10. Laz
11. Kolaymi
12. Mastika
13. Topkapinin Bahcesi (Garden at Topkapi)
14. Whirling Dervish
15. Village Song
Release
Date: July 11, 2000
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Reviews:
Amazon.com: 
Turkish born and bred, Omar Faruk Tekbilek is a musician whose
virtuosity is nurtured by grace and passion. Faruk can play just
about any Middle Eastern instrument you can think of--the ney
flute, the stringed baglama, the percussive dumbek--and he's a
master of them all. But if not for producer Brian Keane, Faruk
would be just another Middle Eastern musician playing for belly
dancers, which he did for years with a group called the Sultans,
who have one track on the disc. In 1988, Keane plucked Faruk from
a Middle Eastern bar and made him the centerpiece of a soundtrack
and album, Suleyman the Magnificent.
Selections from that album and seven other CDs comprise Dance
into Eternity. As Faruk and Keane's relationship became more closely
interwoven, you can hear them creating a unique Middle Eastern
fusion. Keane backed Faruk's searingly beautiful ney melodies
with synthesizers and acoustic guitar, and added other Middle
Eastern players such as Ara Dinkjian and Arto Tunboyaciyan from
the group Night Ark. This wasn't belly dance music anymore, although
tracks such as 'Siseler', featuring Faruk on the whining zurna,
would get any exotic dancer gyrating. Keane and Faruk worked in
orchestral territory, with Faruk's gorgeous melodies curving around
ballads such as 'Kolaymi' or the trance meditations of 'Whirling'.
Skillfully selected and annotated by John Schaefer, Dance into
Eternity is a wonderful introduction to Omar Faruk Tekbilek."
--John Diliberto
The
label, Ann Brumbaugh , August 15, 2000 A compilation of Faruk's
finest work... The artist "I have a picture I carry in my mind,"
Faruk reveals. "I call it the Tree of Patience." The road to becoming
a professional musician was long and winding, a journey which
required a fair amount of patience and acceptance of some unusual
situations. "My first teacher taught baglama (the long-necked
Turkish lute)," he explains. "He had a music store, but he also
had a regular government job during the day. So he told me, come
after school, open the store, and I will teach you." Working in
the store, Faruk learned the intricate rhythms of Turkish music,
how to read scales, and more. But if the roots of Faruk's Tree
of Patience were sown at home, in the small town of Adanali, Turkey,
the trunk, he explains, grew up in the big city-Istanbul. Faruk
had been studying Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, with the
thought of becoming a Sufi cleric. At 15, he quit school to become
a professional musician. "But I never quit studying, though,"
he maintains. "In fact, I am still studying; it's endless. Music
for me is not something to show off. It's my life. It's the shortest
path to God. Playing is prayer for me." He went to Istanbul and
at the age of 17 met the Mevlevi Dervishes, the ancient Sufi order
of Turkey. He did not join the order, but felt profoundly influenced
by their mystical approach to sound and to the spirit. The project
Faruk's first international exposure was on Brian Keane's 1988
album SÜLEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT
(13023-2). A film was being made about the Ottoman emperor Süleyman
to coincide with the opening of an exhibition at New York's Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and Keane was hired to do the soundtrack. Wanting
to incorporate Turkish instruments and players, Keane called Arif
Mardin, the legendary producer of the Bee Gees and Aretha Franklin
and asked if he knew any Turkish musicians. He didn't, but called
later saying his cooks went to Fazils, a belly dance club in Manhattan.
This is where Keane first heard Faruk play, and he recalls, "You
could tell immediately that he was different. His playing was
so emotional, he really stood out." Keane knew what he wanted
for the soundtrack-the mystical sound of the Sufi flute, or ney,
added to his own synthesizer. As far as he knew, this combination
hadn't been done before, and he invited Faruk to his studio to
try it. "When Faruk started playing," he says, "the hairs on the
back of my neck stood up. It was magic from the start." Between
1987 and 1998 Faruk and Keane recorded six CDs for Celestial Harmonies,
SÜLEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT (13023-2),
FIRE DANCE (13032-2), BEYOND
THE SKY (13047-2), WHIRLING
(13086-2), MYSTICAL GARDEN
(13092-2) and CRESCENT MOON
(13176-2). Faruk also appears on FATA MORGANA (13110-2) and SALOME
(15031-2) with Australian percussionist Michael Askill. This compilation
contains Faruk's finest work, including a previously unissued
performance from a WNYC-FM radio concert recorded in New York
City in 1990 and a track by Faruk's old band, The Sultans, culled
from a private release. "Working with Faruk has been one of the
most satisfying muiscal experiences of my life," says Keane. Both
helped with the music selection on this compilation, which reflects
some of the finest flowerings of Faruk's Tree of Patience.
|
