The Murmure of the Orient

About

The Murmure of the Orient is based on an intimate approach to music, nourished by both the ragas of India, the Arab maqâms and all the cultures of the East. It offers a soothing, spiritual and meditative music that invites us to a certain quality of being, generating an emotion that brings back to itself.

The two double CDs of the Murmure de l’Orient offer intimate and calm encounters in the form of solo, duet or trio, but the meeting of up to six musicians on stage offers a music with dynamic evolution: over the course of the exchanges, introductions calm and soothing, in the spirit of the album, turn into a dynamic show.

The originality of the project lies in the ability to succeed a meeting at the crossroads of all these cultures: all the guests are, in their country, “classical” musicians of scale demonstrating a will of exchange. Each one opens to the music of the other without ever sacrificing one’s own culture.

“This is a real peculiarity of our time: all over the world, musicians seek to express both the uniqueness of their own culture and their need to be open to diversity. The Whisper of the East brings together those whom I had the chance to meet and strives to strike a fair balance between these two trends.” says Manuel Hermia

Over the years the line up of the Murmure de l’Orient has evolved. Today, Manuel Hermia plays sometimes in solo, and sometimes surrounded by a larger team, with Majid Bekkas (oud, guembri, Morocco), Ghalia Benali (singing, Tunisia), Kheireddine M’Kachiche (violin, Algeria), Guo Gan (erhu, China), Khalid Kouhen (percussion) and sometimes Purbayan Chatterjee as guest (Sitar, India).