Sojourns on the Silk Road: from the Orient to the Occident

Sojourns on the Silk Road: From the Orient to the Occident is a musical journey of French and Spanish art song on themes of the “Orient” featuring mezzo-soprano Jessica Blau, pianist Katherine Ciscon, guitarist Marc Rosenberg, and flamenco dancer Fanny Ara.

The 19th century Western perception of the Orient was largely based on the colonial expansions into Africa and Asia during that time. French composers became entranced with the perceived exotic elements of these distant lands, creating their own fantasies of the Orient, which included all non-Western cultures from the Far East to Africa and especially Spain, with its Romani, Jewish and Moorish influences. French and Spanish musical expressions of the Orient will be accompanied by lyrical flamenco dance and orientalist paintings to works by Ravel, Bizet, Debussy, Saint Sa?ns, De Falla, Lorca, and Alb?niz, among others.