Senso di Voce is the American, Austin-based duo of Istanbul-born vocal artist Esin Gunduz, who describes her art as exploring «life’s energies as vibrations, timbre as visceral sensory experience, and building landscapes from recorded voices to surround acoustical instrumental textures», and classical wind instrumentalist Megan Kyle. through itself is the sophomore album of the duo, following Tierceron (Other Minds, 2023, with violinist Henry Virdsey). The album was produced by Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and released on his label, Sonic Transmissions.
…through itself… (2023) is Gunduz’ 20-minute, four-movement intimate chamber work, that draws inspiration from the mystical and philosophical writings of Andalusian revolutionary Islamic-Sufi thinker İbn ‘Arabî (1165-1240). İbn ‘Arabî valued the ‘immediate experience” above all, and the album invites listeners to immerse themselves in ecstatic vibrations, guiding them to the depths of consciousness through sound.
Gunduz adds tremolo harmonica, bass harmonica, and harmonium to her expressive vocals, and Kyle plays oboe and English horn. The album was recorded live at the Institute Library in New Haven and at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Atonement for Fire Museum Presents in Philadelphia.
This chamber work is introduced and concluded by a free, intense, spiritual improvisation. Each of the four movements explores a different concept, their trajectory mirroring that of Sema (سَماع, literally: listening), a Sufi ritual, performed as part of the meditation and prayer practice. The first movement, «Selam» (which means peace in Arabic), represents the wish for a direct personal experience of the divine. It expresses a yearning to become one with it, often achieved through listening to the measured recitation, singing, or chanting of spiritual verses or poetry, but here it is conveyed through a meditative, ethereal, and spacious song. The following «Everything is alive» relates to the life-force inside all existent things, «even inside a rock», and transforms Senso di Voce interplay into an intense and ecstatic mode. The mysterious «Perplexity» relates to a state of bewilderment, a time of spiritual reality that opens the mind and reveals itself in shattering clarity, as «Allah Who is known only through the fact that He is not known». The last movement, «Oneness», returns to the primal meditative state of union with the divine and reaches a higher state of consciousness.
Quite a powerful and immersive listening experience.
Eyal Hareuveni
Esin Gunduz (voice, tremolo harmonica, bass harmonica, harmonium), Megan Kyle (oboe, English horn)
