Mara!
Live in Europe won the ARIA (Australian
Recording Industry Award) for best Australian World Music release
2001. Mara!
Live in Europe won the ARIA (Australian
Recording Industry Award) for best Australian World Music release
2001. Live in Europe was recorded at the European Broadcasting Union Festival in July 2000 by ABC Radio's Paul Petran in the Czech Radio mobile at the Wallachian Open Air Museum in Roznov. Copies of the tape were broadcast by several of the participating European radio teams.
"Live in Europe" contains 12 tracks recorded direct to stereo DAT over 2 nights. It captures brilliantly both the sound and the energy of the band, and contains several previously unrecorded pieces. ABC Radio Music Deli and the Australia Council for the Arts provided funding assistance for Mara! to appear at the festival.
You can purchase this and all Mara!'s other CDs from the Mara Music shop.
1 "The Big Dance" (trad Bulgarian arr Mara!) 1'21" (excerpt)
2 "Ovdovyala Lissichkata" (trad Bulgarian arr Mara Kiek) 0'45" (excerpt)
3 "Tu Madre Quando Te Pario" (trad Sephardic arr Mara!) 3'04" (excerpt)
This
outstanding album wasn’t planned. Last year Mara! performed at the European
Broadcasting Union Festival in the Czech Republic, and the ensuing recording was
so exceptional as to demand release.
Praise be. It is no disservice to the band’s glowing back catalogue to suggest that this album is its finest. The sound is transparent and sparkling, and it is one of those rare live recordings which actually bottles the energy and excitement generated in concert – and with the band at its best.
The
program is brilliantly structured. There is a sense of
impending
drama in the edgy Na
Dolu,
with its rolling bass
solo from Steve Elphick, followed by the settling effect of
Andrew Robson’s Glastonbury
Lullaby,
the composer’s soprano saxophone melting across arco bass. When Mara Kiek’s
voice finally bursts upon us on All
Summer,
it is a sonic king-hit.
Erupting into life, the song has Mara’s voice flooding through the swirling
horn-lines, with stirring solos from Llew Kiek’s bouzouki (which has never
been better recorded), Paul Cutlan’s tenor sax and Robson’s soprano.
It
highlights how this incarnation of the band has evolved. The jazz inclinations
of Cutlan and Robson
Cutlan’s
soprano sax is a dervish frenzy of melody on Llew’s thrilling Eyes
Like Berries.
Then his clarinet, an especially evocative texture in this music slinks to the
fore on Robson’s silken Alessandria,
which also features a streaming bouzouki solo. Nesine
is a traditional Turkish song on which Mara’s voice has the unstoppable force
of an avalanche amid the guttural saxophone interjections.
Cutlan’s
witty The
Big Pack
hurls Robson into a spasm of invention, as, in completely contrasting style,
does
Tu
Madre,
with its riveting opening dialogue between guitar and bass, before the tune
uncoils into Mara’s lovelorn and affecting lament. Offer Elphick solo space in
such a mood and he will almost invariably create something memorable. His solo
here equals the work of Charlie Haden or Danny Thompson.
They close with The Big Dance, the energy electric as Cutlan’s soprano scalds its way over the bouzouki and bass, while Mara sings like her life depends on it. Sometimes the best things aren’t planned.