Restless Nation - The Music of Andy Teirstein

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Restless Nation – The Music of Andy Teirstein features works that were inspired by world music traditions (Navona NV6397 navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6397). 

The Cassatt String Quartet performs the title work, its impressions of a year-long family expedition evoking “the fierce energy” of American fiddling. 

On Secrets of the North the Mivos String Quartet is joined by Marco Ambrosini on the nyckelharpa, the traditional Swedish keyed fiddle, in a work that incorporates elements inherent in Swedish folk music.

Azazme Songs, Suite for String Quartet, Oud and Dulcimer was composed after a four-day trek with Azazme Bedouins across the Aravah desert. They are not direct transcriptions but rather impressions gleaned, the dulcimer representing the sound of the Bedouin sumsumia, a strummed psaltery-type instrument. The Mivos String Quartet performs again, with the composer playing dulcimer and Yair Dala on the oud.

Teirstein plays a brief harmonica solo to open Letter From Woody with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra under Jirí Petrdlík. Inspired by one of the letters that Woody Guthrie wrote to his future wife, it “draws on traditional American folk string bowings and energies.”

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