This music is very much the opposite of what one thinks of when one thinks of Turkey. It is placid, cool, and quiet. On the other hand, it is very personal and heartfelt as well, and that is in keeping with preconceptions of Turkey. Mr. Asadurjan plays a recorder-like reed instrument, called a duduk, which sounds very much like a less “lively” clarinet. What he plays with it are songs of quiet longing. Accompaniment varies. Recommended for its inherent beauty and also for the otherworldliness of the sounds. Perhaps it’s also spooky, not in the cheesy scare way that that word often implies, but rather in the way that it so strongly evokes a slow and remote time and place that we can hardly imagine here in 2003 USA.

1. Soft drone, soft melody
2. Lively zither, soft drone, more upbeat duduk
3. Louder drone, sadder tune
4. Tender tanbur (zither), more assertive, almost sax-like duduk trills
5. Unbearably gorgeous melody
6. Like a slightly muffled violin, the strings here are ever-so-slightly scraping
7. Sharp clarinet timbres pierce the subtle drone
8. Similarly beautiful but only half the length of the other tracks
9. Ever-so-slightly less special for the presence of an acoustic guitar
10. Two-duduk approach – bass and “regular”
11. A bit of a wedding of New Age zither-tapping to Kenny G-style soprano trilling; skip