Garden of Silence – Neither You Nor I (Bazaarpool, 2025)
Swiss-based ensemble Garden Of Silence released its debut album Neither You Nor I on Bazaarpool in 2025, reviving a project that began more than a decade ago with the late Iranian singer, harpist, and composer Asita Hamidi.
The delightful music on this recording is exquisite, engaging and beautifully crafted. Gorgeous vocals, magnificent instrumentation. The group emerged from Hamidi’s earlier project, Asita Hamidi’s Bazaar, in the early 2010s. She and electric bass player Björn Meyer began developing a new ensemble in 2009 after Hamidi described a powerful but hard-to-define sound she had imagined. Their focus shifted quickly toward gathering musicians with shared values rather than assembling a conventional lineup.
Meyer and Hamidi spent several years traveling between Iran, Egypt, Sweden, and Switzerland to invite players into the project. The resulting nine-piece band unites nyckelharpa, violin, cello, duduk, bass clarinet and soprano saxophone, electric bass, bass mandola, drums, percussion and two vocalists. Meyer describes the group as a set of intersecting ensembles, with soloists and smaller sections stepping forward inside a larger framework.
Recording began in 2012, then stopped abruptly when Hamidi, Meyer’s partner, died from cancer. The material remained shelved for about ten years. New arrangements eventually brought the original cast back together alongside three additional members, and the project resumed under the name Garden Of Silence.
Meyer frames the ensemble’s mission as both musical and social, rooted in the members’ mixed backgrounds and the cities they call home, including Stockholm, several Swiss locations, Düsseldorf, Cairo, and Tehran. “Our mission is to bring beauty into this world,” he says, emphasizing collaboration and the idea of creating something “bigger than the sum of its parts.”
Musicians: Björn Meyer, artistic director, bass, bass mandola (Sweden/Switzerland), Klaus Gesing (Germany) on bass clarinet, soprano saxophone; Kaspar Rast (Switzerland) on drums, percussion; Carlo Niederhauser (Switzerland) on cello; Emilia Amper (Sweden) on nyckelharpa; Veronika Stalder (Switzerland) on vocals; Mohammed Sami (Egypt) on violin; Reza Asgarzadeh (Iran) on duduk; and Karin Streule (Switzerland) on vocals.
Buy Neither You Nor I.
Author: Angel RomeroAngel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
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