Mara & Martenitsa Choir – Tra Parole e Silenzio

The title means ‘between words and silence’.

This audacious and highly eclectic song cycle celebrates life’s most precious treasures – the ones you cannot buy.
It is a very beautiful, seemingly-unlikely marriage of mid-20th century Italian poetry, a Sydney-based quasi-‘Bulgarian’ choir and original music from a virtuosic Australian band whose members (and friends) have deep roots in several very different traditions.

Since the 1980s Mara! has been one of the world’s more consistently creative and able ‘World Music’ ensembles.

The core quintet, is named after its singer and percussionist Mara Kiek. Co-founder Llew Kiek plays guitars and various members of the lute family. For most of the band’s life Steve Elphick has been its uncommonly eloquent double bassist. The quintet generally deploys two remarkable reed players. In recent years Paul Cutlan, Andrew Robson and Sandy Evans have shared those chairs.

The Martenitsa Choir is an entity in its right, but intimately connected to Mara! When established in 1989, Martenitsa was the first such full-tilt Bulgarian-styled choir, outside Bulgaria . Its primary vocal soloist Silvia Entcheva was a noted soloist in Bulgaria, before she moved to Australia in 1994.

For many years Daniele Di Giovanni has been The Mara! band’s sound mixer. His father – Eduardo Di Givoanni (1931-1990) – was a lawyer and human rights advocate. Post Mussolini, he was among the authors of Italy’s new Constitution.

Eduardo Di Giovanni was also a poet.

His son showed Mara! the poems his father had written in the 1950s and ‘60s. They are tender, poignant and timeless verses about love, home, family and friends.

Tra Parole e Silenzio was conceived in 2000, then developed over the next decade.