PROJECTS
Oneira
Formed on the initiative of Iranian percussionist Bijan Chemirani, Oneira is a dream (the meaning of "oneira"), a dream enriched by the experiences and emotions of each of its members, the result of their respective backgrounds, travels, traditions... The group is composed of hurdy-gurdy player Pierlo Bertolino (Dupain, Ahamada Smis), guitarist Kevin Sedikki (Dino Saluzzi, Al Di Meola), Harris Lambrakis (Savinata Yanatou), who plays the ney (end-blown flute), and the two singers, Maria Simoglou (Stelios Petrakis, Sokratis Malamas), who hails from Thessaloniki, and Maryam Chemirani (Trio Deilizioso Compagnie Zelwer), Bijan's sister. A close-knit, yet very open group, Oneira welcome here some delightful guests: guitarist Pierrick Hardy, lyra player Stratis Psaradellis, the Sardinian singer Gavino Murcia, and that wizard with words from Gascony, André Minvielle. Together these artists turn their individual dreams into scintillating pieces of music.
Four of the pieces are re-creations of tradition: Apòpse ta mesànyhta, which comes from Thrace, To fileman (aki so peran) from the Black Sea, Hassan Chabi, belonging to the Alevi community of Turkey, and Sorcière, from Finland. Leis Auras is a setting of a text by the Occitan poet Roland Pecoud; in La Bourdique, to words by André Minvielle, Oneira present their own version of Richard Hertel's setting. Ferdows Dami and Mou'pe mia magissa are composed to verses (sung in Persian and Greek) by the eleventh-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, while Sanama is a lively setting of lines by the thirteenth-century Persian poet and mystic Rumi (popularly known as Mevlana). Sometimes, as in Sorcière or Râh, the language is very original, and sometimes the music speaks for itself, as in the two interludes, Ambianz and Ambianz II, in which electric or electro phantoms express their secrets.
Albums from this project
Oneira
Tâle Yâd (2012)
Two years after their first collection of musical dreams, Si la Mar, in which they sounded the poetic depths of the sea, Oneira look this time to the heavens with Tâle Yâd (Persian: Memories of Stars); they continue to exchange, compare and combine the poetry and traditions of Greece, Persia and Occitania. With great freedom and ease, they invent a world that lies at the confluence of several different cultures.
Oneira
Si La Mar (2010)
"Our group travels in the land of improvisation based on its own compositions. All of us have had that dream of a better life, in which all the good aspects of our traditions, and our inventions, would be retained. So, with our instruments, our passions, our friendship, what we have from our forebears, what is murmured to us by cities, we play and create music from here and elsewhere, and share the pleasure of a moment spent together on the shores of the Mediterranean, and a little further afield." Pierre-Laurent Bertolino
