EventsTurkwaz at Pique Fall Edition
LabO Theatre (60 Waller Street)
September 24, 2022
8:30 pm
The music of Turkwaz is immersed in diverse traditions from Sufi devotional love songs to Thracian dance music
Let’s start the Stonecroft Symposium: THREE SONGS off with some music! CUAG and Debaser are pleased to co-present a performance by Toronto-based musicians and singers Turkwaz.
Their work together focuses on interpretations of songs primarily from Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Balkan traditions, with forays into other genres when the inspiration moves them. With gentle accompaniment provided by qanun, tambura, ukulele and various forms of hand percussion, the songs and the voices remain front and centre.
The group’s debut album “Nazar” was nominated for a 2017 Juno and two Canadian Folk Music Awards, and made the “Top of the World” list in Songlines magazine in April 2018.
This event is PWYC. More information here.
Participants
Turkwaz is Sophia Grigoriadis, Jayne Brown, Maryem Tollar and Brenna MacCrimmon, four vocalists who individually have contributed widely to the Toronto world music scene and beyond. They have a longstanding collective interest in Balkan traditions and add Albanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian music and whatever else strikes their fancy to their repertoire.
Maryem Hassan Tollar draws on her Arabic language heritage, Jayne Brown and Sophia Grigoriadis bring their experience with Greek music to the mix and Brenna MacCrimmon adds her fascination with Turkish music. The love and respect they have for the traditions they draw from are clear but they are not afraid to arrange the tunes in new and unexpected ways to give them a fresh spin.
Turkwaz has performed at the National Arts Centre and Chamberfest in Ottawa, Calgary Folk Festival, Open Ears Festival (Kitchener), Silence (Guelph), Mill Race Festival (Cambridge), Shelter Valley Folk Festival (Grafton), Summerfolk (Owen Sound), Cultura (North York), Luminato (Toronto), as well as at numerous venues in and around Toronto including the Small World Centre, The Burdock, COC Bradshaw Amphitheatre and the Aga Khan Museum.
