Lessons from Nightingales: Songs of Sufi Mysteries

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BHCD 1015
Release date: August 15, 2025

The fruit of a unique collaboration between a brilliant musical polymath and one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles specializing primarily in medieval and Renaissance polyphony—the composer Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol and Blue Heron—Lessons from Nightingales presents the world premiere recordings of two new pieces inspired by the two principal Turkish traditions of Sufi mysticism.

The Triumph (composed in 2024 for Blue Heron’s 25th birthday) sets a poem by the Bektaşi Sufi dervish Edip Harabi (1853-1917) in a dazzling sound world created by an ensemble of voices, bowed tanbur (long-necked lute), ney (end-blown flute), and an array of percussion, weaving together elements of Turkish songs, modes, and rhythmic cycles; Renaissance counterpoint; and the Japanese court music called Gagaku.

Devran (composed in 2017) honors pluralism within Islam by setting texts by Mevlevi Sufi dervishes in a two-movement a cappella piece like a motet—a staple of Renaissance European Christian music—in which the imitative style of sixteenth-century counterpoint is the main influence, while Middle Eastern makam (mode) tradition and elements of Turkish Sufi music contribute substantially to the musical effect.

A distinctly jazz-influenced harmonic palette lends its glamorous color to both pieces. Blue Heron applies its signature intensity, expressivity, and mastery of polyphony to Sanlıkol’s bewitching twenty-first century polyphony, joined in The Triumph by the virtuoso instrumentalists of Sanlıkol’s ensemble DÜNYA.