Spontaneity at core of Irish-Turkish Project
The Irish-Turkish Project, a collaboration between Galway-born guitarist Aengus Hackett and Turkish singer Sanem Kalfa, comes to NUI Galway on Thursday next, March 12, and Campbell’s Tavern, on Friday, March 13.
“We met in Holland, we were studying music,” says Aengus explaining the background to the project. “We did one concert together in NUIG a few years ago; it was more like a jazz thing. But we also did a few Irish and Turkish songs, and we really liked that. That was the birth of the idea.”
Their current, nationwide, tour has received Arts Council funding, which made the project a lot more feasible.
“It really gave it gusto, put a fire under the project,” Aengus says. “We can do a proper tour and get something very strong out of it.”
The ‘something strong’ involves, as the name says, a mix of traditions.
“We’re basically going to do well-known Irish folk songs and Turkish songs. In previous projects, I’d approach it with a lot of arrangements, but I think we’re going to take the songs as they are and see what we do with them. Keep it simple, but spontaneous at the same time.”
The spontaneous element will come from the jazz techniques that Aengus and Sanem learned while they were at the prestigious Music Conversatorium in Amsterdam.
"Sanem won the Montreux Jazz Vocal award in 2010 – it’s a very prestigious prize,” Aengus says.
For more, see this week's Connacht Tribune