Composer Between Worlds: Dimitrie Cantemir series

Cantemir in Concert - June 11, 2009
Dimitrie Cantemir: A Life in Music- Lecture/Demos - June 12 & 13, 2009

Neva Özgen, Murat Aydemir and Mesut Özgen with Lux Musica

The Turkish trio Neva Özgen (kemenche), Murat Aydemir (tanbur), and Mesut Özgen (guitar) are joined by Lux Musica on baroque harpsichord, flute, violin, and viol.

Travel to eighteenth-century Istanbul and Moscow through the music of composer, scholar, and diplomat Dimitrie Cantemir, a flamboyant and brilliant figure who served both the Ottoman sultan and the Russian tsar. A speaker of eleven languages, he wrote a history of the Ottomans that inspired Edward Gibbon with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His treatise on Turkish classical music included more than 350 original compositions. After he led an ill-fated rebellion against the Ottomans in Moldavia, Cantemir escaped to Moscow, where he helped translate the Byzantine Greek liturgy into Russian. Turkish instrumentalists join the Baroque music ensemble Lux Musica to recreate the sounds of Cantemir's Moldavian homeland and his careers in Istanbul and Moscow, where he organized lavish musical events with his daughter, a harpsichordist trained in the Italian style. Presented in conjunction with The Tsars and the East.

Cantemir in Concert: Washington DC - June 11th, 2009 7:30 PM at the Smithsonian Institute

Freer Gallery, Meyer Auditorium
Freer and Sackler Galleries
The Sackler Gallery is located at 1050 Independence Avenue, SW
Directions

Dimitrie Cantemir: A Life in Music - Lecture/Demos

Lecture/Demo: Washington DC - June 12th, 2009 1 PM at the Smithsonian Institute
Lecture/Demo: Washington DC - June 13th, 2009 2:30 PM at the Smithsonian Institute

Sackler Gallery, Sackler sublevel 1
Freer and Sackler Galleries
The Sackler Gallery is located at 1050 Independence Avenue, SW
Directions

Related Recording: Cantemir: Music in Istanbul and Ottoman Europe around 1700 (GHP 019-2)