FRIDAY NIGHTS AT THE Q

Musicians and the audience are loving the acoustics in our carefully restored 1876 heritage listed building that started out as the first Sunday School in Adelaide and went through a variety of incarnations including The Q Theatre during the 1970's.

THE MERAKI ENSEMBLE

The Meraki ensemble perform traditional Greek music inspired by Café Aman repertoires of the early 19th century Ottoman Empire. These diverse repertoires included Asia Minor music of diverse cultures, rebetika ‘urban blues’, nisiotika ‘Greek island’ music and dimotika ‘Greek folk’ music. Our name “meraki”, an adaption of the term “meraki”, “passion”, found in many Greek songs, refers to our ongoing celebration and exploration of the treasure trove that is Greek music, song and dance. Some of these songs are composed and recorded as early as the 1930s while many are of unknown authorship, handed down from generation to generation.The Meraki Ensemble features Michael Tyllis on vocals and oud, Kostas Barlas on vocals and bouzouki, Demeter Tsounis on piano and Joachim Kalapatsonis on bass.

MARYAM RAHMANI started playing the Santur, a percussive, delicate 72-stringed instrument, when she was 12 – but it was in her late teens, while studying physics, that she realised she wanted to be a musician.

After graduating from both physics and music in Tehran, Maryam migrated to Adelaide in 2019. She says that when she first arrived, she “was full of emotions” but didn’t have the vocabulary to speak about it. Music helped her during this time, to “talk without any words”.

'Some people say the sound is first, and the meaning or the text will come after – but for me, always, the meaning has privilege. '- Maryam Rahmani.

DAVID MORAN is an Australian cellist with broad musical interests specialising in the interpretation of exploratory music. Recent accolades include 5-star reviews in Limelight for Kate Neal’s, ‘While You Sleep’, at the Canberra International Music Festival, and for his performances in ‘1:1’ for the Adelaide Festival. The former earned him a nomination for an APRA AMCOS Art Music Award in 2023 for ‘Best Performance of a Notated Work’. David has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra for 2022-24 and was cellist for ULYSSES Ensemble’s 2023 European formation. He recently completed a Masters degree at Monash University under the supervision of Prof Cat Hope and is a graduate of ANAM where he studied under Howard Penny. He has a longstanding duo with Dr Iran Sanadzadeh and is a regular casual cellist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. David has also appeared on the ABC television program, Art Works in a segment on extended technique.

Host or Publisher The Q on Hallett