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PRESS ABOUT US
One cannot fit the art of duo Zikr in any format; critics fail to find a suitable niche for them.
Mikhail Sadchikov, "Smena":
"Not many artists, even the most brilliant of them, have ever chanced to discover something new in the Art. However, fact is fact - duo Zikr is unique and inimitable. Some experts assert its new kind of art and call it a symphonic singing..."
Andrew Stewart, music critic, London:
"We may rightfully call "unique" the mastery of performance of duo Zikr. These brilliant artists nicely combine the elements of freedom and strict form found in all styles - from Asian religious psalms to modern free-jazz creating thereby an abundant variety of vocal expressiveness and sound gamut. The vocal range of Igor and Olga is incredible as it exceeds 4 octaves and stretch from almost unheard whisper to high-pitching cry..."
Nalalia Baklanova, "Business World", 1997, Moscow:
"A man and a woman came to the stage, sat opposite one another, closed their eyes and in some instants the show began that one may hardly call "singing". That is music without words where you can dimly discern the just one thing - the involvement in something peculiar. That is so unusual that at first an inexperienced visitor would stay in complete perplexity. Being puzzled he is trying to remember everything that he's already heard before about guttural singing, shaman sorcery and other attributes of esoteric art. Nevertheless that will appear to be neither of them or anything else. Perhaps we can say about such thing they are "everything and nothing" at the same time.
Andrey Kudryashov, Tashkent:
"The vocal duet of Igor Silin and Olga Tkachenko looks like a bundle of energy of the highest tension. It wasn't just singing. Every soloist became a living organ where all chords of soul were ringing with ultimate tension. Dervish zikr that lied as the basis for Olga's and Igor's art does not belong to any genre of music but being ritual rites, a true prayer addressed to God asking for love. Can a man be a spectator or listener to prayers? One can share Duo Zikr's art only through either participation or contemplation. And thing that happened in the kirk was religious rite. Soloists and their names and history have disappeared from the stage like the stage itself and audience did, even the walls of the temple have gone leaving only the temple in your soul and a whole world around".
Joan Dudinska, Israel:
"Voices were ringing provoking excitement... echoing with anxiety, expectation and belief. To the depth from the depth of divine and spontaneous being in the present. Maybe from the place where our true home is, where we are almost always absent and where we are so hard to take back. Olga and Igor dared to prove that the voice is the perfect music instrument. Their voices wherever they ring fill the space and impart a specific state of eternity to the world. Sounds run their course free of any "discipline", full of sincerity and uncommonly pure. Not "with help of" but "through" them. You touch the highest reality, join it and transfigure".
Tamara Smoryakova, singer, teacher of vocal, St. Petersburg Academy of Dramatic Art:
"The singing of the duet is so uncommon that cannot be fitted in the frames of usual European or even Oriental traditions. We haven't met anything like that before. There is something in the concert hall that reigns and is beyond the immediate perception but devours completely and unconditionally... The soloists are successful in the most essential thing, they carry the audience with them, touch the true chords of the visitors' soul, win their hearts, and, possibly, purge with the fire of art. They definitely have the right to make themselves known at the best stages of the world".
Jim Bessman, special correspondent for BILLBOARD magazine (NY, USA):
"Apart from dynamic improvisations making the visitors experience unique feelings, there is one more thing about the Duo. That is an astonishing attraction of the passion in the very voices and the manner of the performing".
George Levin, USA:
"The voices of man and woman interact in unpredictable freedom without of any melodic or harmonic limits. These are the voices of the multifaceted, transient and everlasting life that we know everything and nothing about. Crying. Screaming. Moaning. Howl. Buzzing. Entreaty. Prayer. Mantras of love. Passion intrigues. Fragment of tunes. They appear from and vanish to nowhere. Flight of sounds. Concentration. Expansion. Space without time. Time beyond the space. Coalescence of time and space: Yin and Yan".
Tatyana Songaylo, "Lithuanian Echo", 1995:
"Strong magic voices are ringing at the stage without a word, without accompaniment, touching the most sensitive chords of human soul. Audience is listening to what is going on in a burst of inspiration. These fascinating voices full of sincerity and unusual purity fill the environment; they can bring the audience to catharsis, purge with the fire of art... Duo Zikr is a different kind of spiritual art that cannot be fitted in any music genre, and versatility is its unquestionable merit. Anyone regardless of the nationality or belonging to some tradition can feel a whole world".
Aleksey Strigin, journalist, St. Petersburg:
"... Music of Duo Zikr is a search for primordial melody from which all others has come from later. Everyone hears his or her own: someone hears sacral motifs, someone avant-garde and free-jazz. ... Their voices vibrate and this vibration bears the space of music. They don't need any instruments as there is no one as good as your own soul. Breath, thoughts and spirits of every visitor inside live in their songs".
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