The Grenchus Foundation @ Piers Faccini - "Cloak of Blue” @ Atrium 360 - David Rubenstein Hall
Atrium 360°
Special Tribute to Lincoln Center & 360 David Rubenstein Atrium
Given we are still in the middle of a pandemic, we will be releasing some of our recorded pieces from the past, that we have never released before! While Atrium 360 ~ David Rubenstein Hall is still closed we will be sharing some of the performances we experienced and enjoyed there …
Enjoy!
Piers Faccini @ France Rocks Festival ~ Atrium 360 David Rubenstein Hall ~ Lincoln Center (2018)
The Grenchus Foundation @ Piers Faccini -”Cloak of Blue” @ Atrium 360 - David Rubenstein Hall
This song is “Cloak of Blue” and relates to Lapis Lazuli, as you will hear Piers discuss within the video we recorded during his visit and performance here…
Historians believe the link between humans and lapis lazuli stretches back more than 6,500 years. The gem was treasured by the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome. They valued it for its vivid, exquisite color, and prized it as much as they prized other blue gems like sapphire and turquoise. The lapis mines that were producing then are still producing today. They are, in fact, the world’s oldest known commercial gemstone sources. Merchant caravans transported their precious blue cargo across Bactria, on their way to the great cities of the ancient Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Persians. Marco Polo referred to the area’s lapis mines in 1271, but few outsiders have seen them because of their inhospitable location. For thousands of years, lapis has been fashioned to show off its rich, dark color. Typically, lapis used in jewelry has been cut into cabochons, beads, inlays, and tablets. But lapis lazuli’s use has never been limited to jewelry alone. It’s also a popular carving material. Throughout its history, lapis has been fashioned into practical objects, including game boards, bowls, dagger handles, hair combs, and amulets.
Today, lapis is frequently fashioned into freeform and nature-themed sculptures. Some of these carvings become wearable art, others are purely decorative. Lapis for short, is a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color. As early as the 7th millenium BC, lapis lazuli was mined in the Sar-i-Sang mines, in Shortugai, and in other mines Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli artifacts, dated to 7570 BC, have been found at Bhirrana, which is the oldest site of Indus Valley Civilization. Lapis was highly valued by the Indus Valley Civilization (7570–1900 BC). Lapis beads have been found at Neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus,and as far away as Mauritania. It was used in the funeral mask of Tutankhamun. (1341-1323 BC). By the end of the Middle Ages, lapis lazuli began to be exported to Europe, where it was ground into powder and made into ultramarine, the finest and most expensive of all blue pigments. Ultramarine was used by some of the most important artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, including Masacio, Perugino, Titian, and Vermeer, and was often reserved for the clothing of the central figures of their paintings, especially the Virgin Mary. All of these are alluded to in the Music and Song of Piers Faccini. We have also tried to capture some of the hues of blue presented at the performance at Lincoln Center 360 Atrium ~ David Rubenstein Atrium, as well the complexity of Piers Faccini’s music. As you will see from out video, we shortened the performance, and included some of our favorite musical highlights from it. From drums to strums and voices….
Here is his full song: CLOAK OF BLUE (as our recording was only a portion of it … and part of his introduction of it)
The English-born, France-based singer-songwriter Piers Faccini, who creates “captivating, quietly insistent” music (Wall Street Journal) in the vein of Nick Drake infused with a global outlook, brings his newest project to the Atrium as part of the France Rocks Festival. Inspired by the rich medieval history of his Mediterranean surroundings, I Dreamed an Island is a fascinating collection of songs drawing on Western, Arabic, and Byzantine influences. Imagining how a Provençal madrigal might sound closer to the mode of an Arabic makan, or how words in English could be put to melodies sung with microtones of a Turkish taqsim, Faccini crosses folk and world music genres, transforming John Martyn into Ali Farka Touré, Pentangle into a Tunisian wedding band, and a Sicilian ciaccona into a Tuareg desert riff….
I Dreamed An Island is a personal quest for Piers Faccini and the album describes his voyage towards an imagined haven through the storms of fear and intolerance currently brewing around the world. Sung mostly in English but in French, Italian dialects and Arabic, too, the album is an impassioned celebration of cultural diversity and pluralism. Searching for a bygone golden era when coexistence and religious tolerance once prevailed, Faccini found a model for his utopian haven in 12th Century Sicily. At the crossroads of Western, Arabic and Byzantine influence, the island briefly flourished as the most enlightened and advanced society in medieval Europe.
Faccini’s latest compositions depict the unique moment of creative cohabitation between peoples and faiths. Inspired by traditions centuries old — but firmly 21st century in its blending of languages, narratives and instrumental arrangements — electric guitars converse across time with a Baroque viola d’amore, while an oud answers a medieval psaltery and a Moroccan guembri pulses trance-like to the drums.
Presented in collaboration with The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Bureau Export, and the France Rocks Festival
lyrics to “Cloaks of Blue”
original release of “I Dreamed of An Island” album
original press release by Lincoln Center
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