BLACK SEA SONGS

When musicians ask you to write liner notes for an upcoming album, they tend to take one of two approaches. Some instantly regale you with stories about the music’s genesis, the production process, and the overarching themes, concerns, and doubts, providing a frame for you to fill. Others simply drop the music in your lap and turn the corner before you have even had the chance to inquire what they have been up to recently. It could be a sign of trust, of course - a way of saying: you are smart enough to make sense of what’s been placed before you. But interpretation is risky. It is fickle by nature, always involving uncertainty and the possibility of getting things wrong. Fortunately, there is the saving grace of imagination, which is inevitably subjective.
Between the three artists on this album, there is a great deal of spontaneity, rooted in years of familiarity. Amsterdam-based Turkish singer/cellist Sanem Kalfa and Romanian multiinstrumentalist George Dumitriu (primarily heard on viola and guitar) have been making music together for more than fifteen  years, both in larger ensembles and as a duo. With her distinctive voice and style, Kalfa effortlessly straddles the borders between jazz, improvised music and global traditions, whereas Dumitriu navigates those same territories with equal ease, also venturing into contemporary classical music and theatre work. Add Belgian Joachim Badenhorst to the mix and you are in for a treat. The Antwerp-based reed player (and occasional vocalist) is one of the most difficult-to-classify musicians on the scene, making him an ideal addition to the already established duo. The trio’s debut album - Black Sea Songs (el NEGOCITO  Records, 2021) - consisted mainly of interpretations of traditional songs. Drawing on words, ideas and melodies from various folk traditions, those pieces were united by the trio’s distinctive sound: elegant yet inquisitive, refined yet adventurous. On this new album, the focus shifts to original compositions -  alongside one improvisation - with lyrics drawn from a variety of sources.
Opener Denizi Özleyenler İçin, is a short, delicate dance with clarinet and vocals swirling around each other in
a dreamy, light-footed embrace while Dumitriu’s viola provides a steady pulse. The lyrics and title are drawn from
a text by Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik (1914-1950) and translate as “For those who miss the sea”. Born in Istanbul, Orhan Veli Kanik quickly dispensed with formality, favouring free verse, everyday language and imagery rooted in harbors, boats and the sea, along with all the emotional resonances they carry. It is a world that suits the trio perfectly. Their music inhabits a similar space, delicately balancing yearning, melancholy and freedom. 
Later in the album, Bogi’s Song is also partly based on a poem by Veli Kanick, although you don’t need to understand the words to feel the melancholy that permeates the piece. The same applies to Balchik named after the Bulgarian town on the Black Sea coast. The song is sparse and restrained, built around Dumitriu’s repetitive guitar figures, which provide an elegantly sketched foundation for Kalfa’s carefully placed words (this time by poet and painter Livia Bălan, who happens to be Dumitriu’s aunt as well), and Badenhorst’s brief yet incisive clarinet intervention.
With a surface area of 436,400 km2 (about the size of Morocco or Sweden), the Black Sea is vast. This deep inland sea lies between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, bordered by six countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine. One could see it as an in-between world, a colossal transit zone where people arrive and depart, where cultures meet and mingle. Here, land, water and port cities form an inseparable whole; not merely locations, but emotional landscapes as well. Harbours, boats, fishermen and seaside towns are therefore more than recurring images. They are motifs laden with memory, symbolism and longing.
Kalfa’s Fisherman begins with her own voice and cello alone, but soon expands through sweeping viola and searing clarinet. The piece unfolds as a prolonged ebb and flow, its initial pulse gradually dissolving into an increasingly intense wave of sustained tones. Something similar occurs in Black, where a strong pulsating cello figure slowly gives way to wordless vocals and subtle sound manipulations. Storm, meanwhile, sets sail in an almost playful, bobbing manner, before gathering a melancholy that carries the listener off towards the horizon. 
In between these sits the improvised Intermezzo, a delightfully repetitive, hypnotic exploration, and Badenhorst’s Mani, a playful chamber piece with Kalfa reciting a counting-out rhyme, with strings and wood providing colorful contrasts and a supremely expressive viola solo by Dumitriu. Taken together, these pieces underline that, over the course of seven compositions and one improvisation, the musicians cover considerable ground, with folk and chamber music leapfrogging alongside improvisation and vivid storytelling.
And that’s why the Black Sea Songs moniker still feels appropriate, despite the fact that the trio has turned inward for inspiration rather than relying on traditional material. Of course, Kalfa and Dumitriu have familial roots in countries bordering the Black Sea, but, as suggested earlier, it is not geography itself that matters. This is also why Badenhorst never feels like an outsider in this line-up. Drawing on imagery charged with universal meaning and an abundance of musical resources, the trio become travelling storytellers, connecting the dots between Amsterdam, Antwerp and that vast, mysterious and inspiring place between East and West.

Guy Peters