Alana Taliana

March 22nd 2019

Light of East Ensemble

The Light of the East Ensemble has a vibrant repertoire that encompasses traditional,

folk, classical Arabic, Sephardic and Greek Rembetika etc. This concerts array of music allowed

the audience to travel around the world in their minds.

The ensemble performed seven pieces at their concert, some in which I already heard when

Mary Ashton and Panayiotis Giannarapis came into our class to perform. I found it very cool to

be able to hear these pieces again, but with additional instruments and vocals as it completely

changed the presences of the pieces. This was extremely evident in their performance of Rampi

– Rampi, a Turkish folk song which was in 9/8 time. There was a lot of improve in the piece with

solos from each performer. I enjoyed how into the piece the performers got, dancing along to

each solo and encouraging the audience the dance along as well.

They performed additional pieces called: Ala Una Yo Naci; a traditional Sephardic Folk Song,

Lamma Badda Yatathana; a traditional Andalusian piece, Evodokia; Modern Greek instrumental

piece, Enta Omri; a modern Egyptian song, Pcho Kandelikas; a Sephardic folk song, Morene Me

Llaman; a traditional Sephardic folk song.

One of these pieces that I really enjoyed and found fun to listen to was Ocho Kandelikas, which

is a Sephardic holiday piece for Hanukah. It’s counting the candles on the menorah, and making

fun a bit because they only count up to eight, when there is actually nine candles.

One thing I wished they did differently was take a little more time to talk about each piece, the

meanings behind them, how the pieces relate to ones culture and where they are from.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed this diverse performance!