Szefárd est - Palya Bea szefárd triója és a Shira u'tfila koncertje

The second singer of the night is the always wonderful Bea Palya, whose colourful career spans a broad repertoire of folk music, jazz and world music inspired by Central and East European traditions. Most recently, Sephardic music has become a cornerstone of the Hungarian singer’s performances. This special culture is implicitly infused with a soft and sensitive feminine side, so those familiar with Palya's style of performance will know to expect an unforgettable evening.

Musicians: Bea Palya - vocal, Mátyás Bolya – lute, zither, András Dés - percussion

"Once, in a store, I picked one of the thousand and thousand records off the shelf. One record of a kind. It was a sephardic folkloric collection, ladies sang on the disc, just one voice, it was simply wonderful. Then the sephardic albums of Ruth Yaakov arrived into my life.

I always thought that the little-asian region is one of the richest from a folkloric point of vue, where turkish and greek and bulgarian folk music lives. Different sort of people are melting there, all of them with their own very special and marvelous sounding, instruments, singing manner, melodies rich in ornement, unique rythms. Jewish people exiled from Spain brought us the music of a very exciting place: the Iberian Peninsula.

I’m fascinated by this world of music, it’s like walking by marvelous ancient treasures, or like suddenly slipping into the lustful tales of One Thousand and One Nights.

I sing one part of the songs in their original language called ’ladino’. For the biggest part I wrote hungarian lyrics to let the hungarian audience admire the songs that they don’t really know even more. In this world, in wedding songs the bride walks on the sea shore, drinks orange flavoured coffee, walks on ivory stairs, her skin is like nacre. Sad mothers of ballads survey the sea waiting for their sons to return disguised as captains.

I invited two companions to this performance, I play for years with them now. We know each-other very well, a lot of songs and concert experiences ally us, it’s a pleasure playing with them. In addition to sephardic, greek, bulgarian, hungarian songs we also play own compositions and lyrics during the concert, even the folk music is formed with our own, personal musicality, we let the moment, the audience, the place influence us. The instruments like lute and zither, the original etnic percussions and the voice are in a perfect fusion, melting in a beatiful sonority, Matyi, András and I dip into one thousand and one sephardic night’s mystery." (Bea Palya)