BY MIRANDA ILCHEF
This June, SARAY Iluminado is once again bringing its unique sound to the Melbourne Recital Centre, weaving together traditional Balkan and Sephardic music with original compositions. Under the guidance of creative director and vocalist Nela Trifkovic, SARAY Iluminado utilises the full range of its talented multi-instrumentalists to create an artistic experience at the crossroads of poetry, music and tradition.
This theme of this Intimate Salon Experiences concert Bruised River represents the bodies of water that unite various countries and cultures in the Balkan regions.
Nela explains further that “the idea is to give a bit more of an interdisciplinary and liturgical backbone to performing cultural music”.
“We are working with two poets who will narrate their original works in Bosnian, Macedonian, and English, as well as performing some of the significant poetry and prose from authors of the region,” Nela shares.
“The theme of the rivers will shed light on the shared identities of the people from the Western Balkans and former Yugoslav region.”
Nela came to Australia as a refugee in the 1990s and studied classical music, but soon rediscovered the music of her Bosnian heritage. She later studied the folk singing she had grown up with in a more formal manner.
“My band members are not of Bosnian background. They are a very mixed bunch, but we all share a love of this music. The melting pot you experience in the work is representative of the melting pot of the ensemble,” Nela says.
“The way I first formed SARAY Iluminado was to work with certain musicians with playing styles I liked, whether it was specialised Balkan music or not. So I work more like a theatre director than a composer or arranger: I make my choices based around the individual performers, the qualities of their playing, and their stage persona.
“I will bring the macro-vision of the song and the architecture of it, but then we open a dialogue and see what the other band members are interested in; what instrument they intuitively want to pick up.”
Nela, who has studied overseas and at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts as well as Victorian College of the Arts, has found her initial classical musical training useful. But she points out the clear stylistic differences involved in singing folk music.
“In Western European music, we are always trying to polish, elevate, and refine. But in Bosnian music, we are trying to delve into a greater range of tones.
“One of the things I love about Balkan music is that they are genres that are not afraid of sadness and grief. They can be incredibly tragic in terms of the stories they share. But they are not defeatist or fatalistic. They simply face loss and grief and simultaneously face new beginnings and overcoming.”
Despite the cultural background of SARAY Iluminado’s work, Nela finds that its music reaches a wide audience.
“We are blessed with a very multicultural audience and with the Melbourne Recital Centre as venue – it attracts musically curious people, world music lovers, and even just audience members who want to try something new.”
For those uninitiated into the world of Balkan music, the sound could be described as rhythmic and soothingly persistent. With SARAY Iluminado bringing the words and sounds of the region to life, this performance may bring a spark to the Melbourne mid-winter.
Hear SARAY Iluminado – Bruised River in the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Intimate Salon Experiences 2024 series. The concert will take place in the Primrose Potter Salon, 7pm June 18.
Images supplied.
