root salad f68 Lingua Franca
Multi-national, multi-tatented. Ton Maas introduces the Rotterdam-based quartet
he instrumental quartet Lingua Franca cast quite a spell with their exquisite and passionate music dur- ing last year’s Womex in Las Palmas. Their sound is an amalgam of their own making that reveals influences from around the eastern part of the Mediterranean. The group, whose members are from Greece, Cyprus and Germany, is based in Rotterdam.
T
Pivotal figure and senior member of the group is Michalis Cholevas from Greece, whose musical education started at the piano at the age of five. At twenty, he enrolled at the Conservatory of Athens where he took classes in western classical music, Byzantine music and jazz.
Feeling adrift and uninspired, Cholevas dropped out of the conservatory after just three years there. Following a brief sojourn into the study of theoretical physics, he returned to music. “Quantum optics proved to be too brainy for me, so I quit that too. By accident, I wound up in a masterclass given by Kudsi Erguner, the great Turkish ney player and scholar of Ottoman music. That experience rekindled my enthusiasm and love for music, and inspired me to study the ney myself. I found out about Codarts in Rotterdam, the only conservatory in Europe that offers a programme in Turkish music (both Anatolian and Ottoman), finished my
master's in Ottoman music there and became one of its teachers myself.”
Because of health issues, Cholevas had to give up the ney and picked up the bow instead. He now plays the yaili tanbur (the bowed variety of the long-necked lute that was the main instrument at the court of the sultans), but his instrument of choice is the tarhu, a modern spike fiddle that was designed and built by the Australian luthi- er Peter Biffin.
After Cholevas moved to the Nether- lands, he tried, unsuccessfully, to form an ensemble. “I have never enjoyed perform- ing as a soloist. And because of this unique school, I was sure I would find the right people there to play with. Unfortunately, there were no musicians I felt really com- fortable with.”
Cholevas’ luck changed a few years later when he met Michalis Kouloumis, one of his students who had come to Rotterdam from Cyprus. “I was already aware of his reputation – people spoke highly of his tal- ent – and when I heard him play, I was immediately impressed. He’s a unique violin player.” Kouloumis, who frequently trav- elled back to Cyprus, was organising a series of workshops there and invited Cholevas to come over, teach some classes and maybe give a few concerts together.
meeting. And when the three of us got together for the first time to play, some- thing totally unexpected happened. We all brought some compositions with us. They were pieces we liked but also felt rather unsure about, as we had never been really happy with the way they had been per- formed up until then. But as if by magic, the three of us made them shine, and in the case of one of my pieces, even more than I had ever expected. Suddenly, I realised I had found my musical soulmates. And you know what? The two of them had the same feeling!”
“O
So what was the magic that happened there? Cholevas takes a few seconds to pon- der the question and then replies: “To some extent, things like that always remain a mystery, you know. But something Kudsi once said about Ottoman classical reper- toire is worth noting here. According to him, you can't really play this music if it isn't already locked into your memory. If you don’t have that sound in your ears, you can- not reproduce it. That’s what I realised when I started to play with these guys: we really have a lingua franca, a shared lan- guage. And it’s not just the grammar and the syntax of the music that we share, but the poetry of it!”
After having given a few small concerts
together, it became clear that the group needed a percussionist. Once back in Rotter- dam, they started looking for one, again with little luck at first. But then Ruven Rup- pik, a young percussionist from Germany who had already finished his classical train- ing, came to Rotterdam to study the tabla.
“By the time I invited Ruven to join us, both he and Giannis had entered the mas- ter’s programme at Codarts, so they too were now students of mine. Having two dif- ferent types of relationship with the people you work with is not always easy, but play- ing together with them felt so natural and was such an inspiration that we had almost unconsciously developed a true group men- tality without any egos getting in the way.”
Watching Lingua Franca perform, it's obvious that the focus is on the close-knit character of the ensemble rather than on the individual musicians. Even Cholevas himself rarely takes a solo: “It’s in my blood, I guess. More than anything, I’m the facilitator. Just being part of it makes me feel privileged.”
linguafrancaensemble.com F
nce I was there, Michalis told me about a wonderful oud player he had heard and suggested we arrange a
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