Product Description

Musical inspiration is a tricky thing. It is hard to plan for; sometimes, it just happens. It certainly happened when percussionist Michael Askill met the Turkish multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek for the first time in an Australian broadcasting studio. Askill is one of the finest percussionists in Australia; Tekbilek plays flutes, reeds, lutes, and percussion. With a trio of additional percussionists, these two musicians created an exhilarating romp through the musical cultures of the Near East, the Pacific Rim, West Africa, and Western jazz or classical music. Fata Morgana captures the spontaneity and joy of the music-making process - something usually missing from studio recordings.

Askill and Tekbilek collaborated on most of the compositions. Some, like Under Desert Stars, evoke the nocturnal music rituals of the desert; others, like The Goldsmiths or the clever Sufi House, recall Tekbilek's colorful and popular collaborations with Brian Keane. The inspiration for these works developed from simple images and stories shared by the two musicians; more conventional musical decisions - instrumentation, for example, or the tempo of a piece - were left for the actual recording sessions. As a result, Fata Morgana has a strong improvisatory quality, while at the same time creating a sound world that is clearly mapped out. Fata Morgana is both exotic and accessible; even more to the point, it captures the enthusiasm of two talented musicians from opposite parts of the globe, sharing their musical explorations with each other and with the listener.

About the Artist

Producer and composer Michael Askill is regarded by many as Australia's finest percussionist. He is a founding member and Artistic Director of Australia's premier contemporary ensemble Synergy, a composer, producer, and the former Head of the Percussion Department at the Canberra School of Music.

For Celestial Harmonies/Black Sun Music he has recorded Australian Percussion (13085-2), Fata Morgana (13110-2) with Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Space: Music for Bells, Cymbals and Gong (13262-2) with Fritz Hauser, Shoalhaven Rise (15019-2) with Riley Lee and Michael Atherton, Free_Radicals: Music for Voice, Percussion & Didgeridoo (15027-2) with David Hudson, Alison Low Choy and Alison Eddington, Rhythm in the Abstract: Selected Pieces 1987-1999 (15031-2) and Salome (15031-2) with Omar Faruk Tekbilek.

"I have a picture I carry in my mind," Omar Faruk Tekbilek 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.

To date, Faruk's recordings on Celestial Harmonies are Suleyman the Magnificent, Fire Dance and Beyond the Sky (13047-2) with Brian Keane, Whirling (13086-2), Mystical Garden (13092-2), Fata Morgana (13110-2) with Michael Askill, Crescent Moon (13176-2) and Dance into Eternity: Selected Pieces 1987-1998 (13190-2).