It is on these crossing routes that the Sirba Octet is engaged today. Tsuzamen brings together and brings to life this concentration of humanity in one movement. Music and song are omnipresent. Whether preparing for a wedding or celebrating a reunion, the same scene is repeated :

‘A little tipple – Lekhaym! – to friendship and friends’.

The instruments are taken out – violin, cimbalom, duduk… -, songs and dances accompany the party, welcoming relatives, friends, and neighbours who arrive one after the other. These are moments when everything is shared: happiness and laughter as well as the marrow (ghapama) that is carefully cooked before being offered to the guests.

What would we see in that tearful gaze ? A house, no doubt, or rather a village with its families assembled, meals, dances. And children.

It is in their games, in their joy, that hope is rooted. “If I chase the children away, people will say that for us there is no more sun” are the first words of the lively gypsy melody, Le Shavore. They are echoed in so many songs from the Yiddish repertoire: “Have fun, children, spring is blooming again”. These children we see growing up, until their wedding day, when they will leave to the sound of the violin, laughter and tears, will once again be mixed:

“Play, fiddlers, greet the bride / All our daughters are being taken from us / With three girls it was difficult / Oh, without them, it’s much worse!”

They are the ones through whom everything is perpetuated, the reinvented future of traditions. They are the custodians of the memory of the elders, and we would like it not to be too cumbersome, not to chip away at their innocence. They will make it live, bloom again spring after spring, by the immortalised song.

The instruments are the conveyers of this history, this music and these songs.

Over the past twenty years, the Sirba Octet has affirmed its own colour and refined its nuances. The expressive palette of the string quintet, the clarinet, the cimbalom and the piano, served by Cyrille Lehn’s arrangements, is infinite; it cheerfully crosses borders and allows music – Armenian, Jewish, Gypsy – to fraternise in rhythm and colours.

From the outset, Tsuzamen was designed to be performed in a large format, with the participation of a children’s choir alongside the eight musicians of the ensemble. An additional energy is created, serving both the texts and the music. And, for the duration of a concert, one can see at work, in all the beauty of innocence and discovery, the passing on of a timeless and invaluable heritage. Jean-Guillaume Lebrun