Songs from Thessaloniki

Savina Yannatou's fourth ECM album is a dazzling evocation of her band's hometown, plunging deep into it's rich and complex history. Once known colloquially as the Jerusalem of the Balkans, Thessaloniki has been home to a host of cultures, religions and ethnic communities. Greeks, Jews, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Armenians, Macedonians and Pontiac Greeks have shared the city's diverse life. Yannatou gives all of them a voice, even casting an Irish song about Salonika into this multi-lingual program, in which she shines as a unique interpreter and spokeswoman for the city's ghosts. As ever, Primavera en Salonico are a delight, one of the most resourceful bands of any idiom, as they negotiate the inspired - and very varied - arrangements of Kostas Vomvolos. Behind the instrumental texture are the personalities of the players. This is a group full of character, whose core members have been collaborating as an ensemble for more than 20 years. Primavera en Salonico was formed in 1993 to play Vomvolos's arrangements of Sephardic Jewish songs, with Savina as vocalist. But musical connections between several of the players stretch back still further, to the beginning of the 1980s. Between them they have played traditional music and thoroughly experimental music, and the range of experience opens new perspectives on this program of songs.