Intizar. Songs of Longing

The adventurous Rembrandt Trio releases a third album on which they collaborate with an Iranian musician; this time they push their musical boundaries with vocalist Mohammad Motamedi. Born out of a special friendship, improvisation is the guiding principle. Motamedi, a celebrated singer in Iran, is a masterful improviser and has a head full of Iranian poetry - he gets inspired by the mood of the music and then chooses a poem to improvise freely over it. This album contains pieces that fit the more spiritual, traditional Persian repertoire, with texts by Hafez and others, as well as a number of more worldly songs on which the trio is joined by violin, cello and clarinet. Recorded in hi-res audio in a former church, the tracks have a crisp and lifelike quality. Motamedi's unrivaled vocals are matched with rare instrumentation; Rembrandt Frerichs plays old church organs and antique fortepianos, Planjer a whisperkit and Overwater a violone. The collaboration between the Rembrandt Trio and Motamedi becomes an adventurous journey through the colorful Persian musical landscape, where musicians from different continents find a shared language in music and improvisation.