DeutschIncense of Music 20
An Away Game: Incense of Music at the Dorćol Festival, Belgrade
An olfactory concert – Thursday, 29 June 2017, 8:30 pm
Thimios Atzakas: oud (solo)
Incense: White Sage
Jazz Club "Mihailo Miša Blam", Kralja Petra 71, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
For the second time, Incense of Music leaves Berlin behind: for Concert No. 20, we travel to Belgrade, joining the Dorćol Festival as guests of the historic Jazz Club "Mihailo Miša Blam" — one of Serbia's oldest jazz venues, situated in the heart of the historic Dorćol district. A genuine away game for our small series, carrying the olfactory concert experience beyond Berlin's city limits. Our guest is Greek oud virtuoso Thimios Atzakas, performing a solo evening accompanied by the scent of white sage.
For guests who are particularly sensitive to smoke, this event is not recommended.
Artists
Thimios Atzakas — oud
Thimios Atzakas was born in 1971 in Thessaloniki. He studied classical guitar with Costas Kotsiolis, Hubert Käppel, and Carlo Marchione, as well as oud and modal music with Ziad Rajab, Behnam Manadjedi, and Ross Daly. He is a graduate of the New Conservatory of Thessaloniki, the Cologne University of Music, and the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre. In 2013, he completed his doctoral thesis at the University of the Aegean on the topic "People of the Wood — The Art of Oud from the Outskirts of the Eastern Music World to Contemporary Greek Urban Culture." From 1998 to 2004 he lived in Berlin. Over the past decade, his artistic focus has been on playing and exploring the oud and modal Middle Eastern musical traditions, as well as composition and improvisation, while remaining active as an interpreter of classical and contemporary music. He founded several ensembles, including the Armos Ensemble, the Tropos Quartet Berlin, and, together with Antonis Anissegos, the ensemble ΣΩΜΑ. Since 2010 he has been a member of Ex Silentio, an ensemble specializing in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Since 2005, he has taught oud and traditional Greek music ensemble playing at the Department of Music Science and Art of the University of Macedonia. Since 2006 he has organized and served as artistic director of the international summer course "Music Village," held annually for two weeks in Agios Lavrentios, Pelion.
Incense
White sage (Salvia apiana), also known as bee sage or sacred sage, is an evergreen perennial shrub native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, particularly the coastal sage scrub habitats of Southern California and Baja California, along the western edges of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. It typically grows 1.3 to 1.5 metres tall, with whitish-green, evergreen leaves densely covered in fine hairs that hold aromatic oils — an adaptation to the aridity of its habitat. In spring, several flower stalks, sometimes pinkish, rise above the foliage bearing white to pale lavender flowers that strongly attract bees — hence the species name "apiana." The plant grows on dry slopes in coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and yellow-pine forests up to roughly 1,500 metres in elevation.
For numerous Indigenous peoples of California, white sage has been a sacred plant for generations, known by its own name in each language — qaashil (Luiseño), shlhtaay (Kumeyaay), kasiile (Tongva), we'wey (Chumash), and qas'ily (Cahuilla), among others. Its seeds were a main ingredient of pinole, a traditional staple food; the Cahuilla harvested large quantities, mixing them with wheat flour and sugar for gruel or biscuits, while the Chumash and other tribes also ate the leaves and stems. Some tribes used the seeds to remove foreign objects from the eye, while Cahuilla women brewed a root tea for strength and healing after childbirth. The leaves have also long been burned by many Indigenous peoples in purification ceremonies and spiritual practice. In recent decades, growing commercial demand has led to overharvesting of wild populations, prompting many Indigenous communities and conservationists to ask that only cultivated — not wild-harvested — plants be used, and that the plant be treated with respect.
The dried leaves are traditionally bundled into smudge sticks and burned, releasing a strongly aromatic, herbaceous, camphor-like scent with a faint sweetness. Its smoke is believed to have cleansing properties, clearing negative energy from a space and promoting mental clarity and relaxation.