DeutschIncense of Music 9
Doha
An olfactory concert – Monday, 30 January 2017, 8 pm
Gareth Lubbe: viola, overtone singing
Hayden Chisholm: saxophone, overtone singing
Claudio Bohórquez: cello, overtone singing
Incense: Palo Santo, White Sage
Palais im Roten Salon, Volksbühne Berlin – Volksbühne link
The improvisation trio Doha came into being on a spiritual journey in 2004 in Colorado, USA. In the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya at the Shambhala Mountain Center in the Rocky Mountains, they found the right place to unite voices from three continents in a state of meditation. Their shared music-making at the time produced, among other things, a CD recording and a concert tour of the USA. Over the past 13 years, Doha has been quietly nurtured and carried forward among friends, and what was once a Buddhist-shamanic experiment has become an inner, timeless stage that the musicians can still step onto. In this place, everything seems as though improvised: a listening observation of settling processes in the room, while new sounds emerge simultaneously from one's own instrument …
May my hands create beautiful things and my feet take me where I most need to be. The heart will hear with an all listening ear, the voice speak the words needed. May my eyes see the signs and symbols of the earth, my body and space be washed by the fragrant smoke of this plant. The smoke itself carries my calls to the sky in spirals.
(Native American Smudging Prayer)
The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing
For guests who are particularly sensitive to smoke, this event is not recommended.
Artists
Claudio Bohórquez — cello, overtone singing
Born in Germany, of Peruvian-Uruguayan descent, this cellist ranks among the most sought-after musicians of his instrument. In 2000 he gained worldwide attention by winning both the Pablo Casals Competition at the Kronberg Academy and the Geneva International Music Competition. His solo career has since taken him to the most prestigious concert stages in classical music. Claudio also holds a professorship in cello, first at the Stuttgart University of Music and, since 2016, at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. Beyond his work with conductors and orchestras at major venues, Claudio Bohórquez always approaches the repertoire of Western high musical culture against the universal, phenomenological backdrop of the simple human need for music itself — an openness toward folk and jazz expression that has also shaped his own playing style. Claudio plays a cello by G. B. Rogeri.
Hayden Chisholm — saxophone, overtone singing
Hayden grew up in New Plymouth, New Zealand. His wide-ranging multi-instrumental and compositional studies, together with a taste for travel, took him early on to institutions in Switzerland, Greece, India, Yugoslavia, and Japan, before he completed his saxophone studies under Frank Gratkowski at the Cologne University of Music. Through his close association with Nils Wogram's Root 70, he became a local figure of far-reaching influence there during the 1990s. From 1995 he toured India, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, including with pianist John Taylor. Since 2002, Chisholm has collaborated with action artist Rebecca Horn and composed the music for the documentary "Moon Mirror Journey." As a saxophonist, clarinetist, and keyboardist, he has also contributed to albums and concerts by Sebastian Gramss' Underkarl, Antonis Anissegos, David Sylvian, Burnt Friedman, Jaki Liebezeit, and Lula Pena. Chisholm appears as a protagonist in the documentary "Sound of Heimat – Deutschland singt" (2012) by Arne Birkenstock and Jan Tengeler. In 2013 he was awarded the SWR Jazz Prize for his "unique sound aesthetic." In 2015 and 2016, Hayden released two 13-part CD box sets summarizing his body of work to date as a musician and composer.
Gareth Lubbe — viola, overtone singing
Gareth Lubbe, born in Johannesburg, South Africa, began his musical education on piano and violin at the age of four. Five years later he made his orchestral debut as a violinist in Johannesburg, followed by numerous prizes at regional and national competitions. Still during his youth in South Africa, Gareth also learned to play a range of instruments virtuosically, laying the foundation for his remarkable abilities as an overtone singer and improviser. From 1995 to 2001 he studied violin at the Cologne University of Music and chamber music with the Alban Berg Quartet, before continuing with viola studies under Barbara Westphal at the Lübeck University of Music. In 2006 and 2007, Gareth Lubbe was principal violist of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Antwerp under Philippe Herreweghe, before moving to Leipzig, where he was appointed principal violist of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. In April 2013, Gareth was appointed professor of viola at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. He continues to perform internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and celebrated overtone singer.
Incense
Palo Santo is a collective term for various resin-rich woods of Central and South America. Particularly prized were woods of the species Bursera graveolens, growing in Peru and Ecuador. This plant belongs to the torchwood family and is a relative of frankincense and myrrh. It is burned by simply igniting a larger piece of wood with a flame or, particularly in South America, on coals.
Palo Santo is used for cleansing the body and home, including after contact with the sick or deceased. The Inca used it against respiratory and ear infections, burning it also in blends with mate and rhea feathers. Beyond physical cleansing, Bursera graveolens has a psychically stimulating and mildly euphoric effect; as a sacred wood, it is believed to offer protection against witchcraft and evil spirits. Spiritual centres existing even before the classical Inca period — such as Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, Mexico — show evidence of Bursera graveolens incense use. From the Inca and other Indigenous groups, through the criollos of the Spanish colonial caste system, and to this day, Palo Santo is burned to cleanse mala energía. Among the Naporuna in the Amazon lowlands of Ecuador, Palo Santo is used against mal aire, the "sickness of the jumping navel" (see Michael Knapper, "Zwischen mal aire und Malaria — Medizinischer Pluralismus bei den Naporuna im Amazonastiefland von Ecuador," Indiana, 2001).
Palo Santo should not be confused with so-called Peru balsam, Balsamum peruvianum, once used in local hospitals for "sufumigation" (the smoking of a patient), obtained from Myroxylon balsamum var. pereirae — which, despite its name, comes not from Peru but from Central America and Asia. Burned as incense, true Palo Santo releases a warm, sweet, woody scent with notes of pine, mint, and citrus, traditionally used to dispel negative energy and promote calm, clarity, and creativity.
So-called Peru balsam (Balsamum peruvianum)
White sage, a plant species in the genus Salvia within the mint family, is also known as Indian sage. It grows chiefly in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, and was traded from there. Many Indigenous peoples of North America — including the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico — used white sage to cleanse body and spirit, for instance in sweat lodge ceremonies or before important deliberations, to bring them to the best possible conclusion. To this day, the herb continues to be burned across North America in so-called smudging ceremonies to drive away bad spirits. Its psychotropic effects are chiefly an increase in attention and sensory focus.
With over 800 species worldwide, Salvia is an exceptionally species-rich genus; many were burned or otherwise used as medicinal plants even before antiquity, including several species in Daoist Chinese medicine. Introduced by monks and cultivated in European monastery gardens during the Middle Ages, common sage (Salvia officinalis) became known on this side of the Alps as a culinary herb and remedy. More recently, the species Salvia divinorum, from the Sierra Mazateca in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, also known as Aztec sage, has drawn some notoriety, ranking among the strongly psychoactive sage species with hallucinogenic potential; in low doses, the Mazatec people traditionally transformed this intoxicant into a remedy. Compared to the potent Salvia divinorum, the white sage (Salvia apiana) we burn tonight is comparatively subtle, though depending on the method of application and dosage, it too can produce surprising effects while listening to music.
Burned as incense, white sage releases a strongly aromatic, herbaceous, camphor-like scent with a faintly sweet note, and remains associated today with cleansing, clarity, and the dispelling of negative energy.
Mesa Verde "Cliff Palace," Colorado