ANIM Junior Ensemble of Traditional Instruments, Kevin Bishop (viola), Ensemble Zohra, Cuatro Puntos

Since its foundation in 2010, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul has been working small miracles. Its students – among them orphans, street vendors and other disadvantaged children – play both western and traditional Afghan instruments in groups which include a ground-breaking girls’ ensemble. On this album, the fruit of a remarkable collaborative project, they meet the US string sextet Cuatro Puntos. In Sadie Harrison’s Gulistan-e Nur: The Rosegarden of Light, they perform Afghan songs and dances which Harrison’s music then explores and develops. Kevin Bishop’s arrangements of Afghan tunes likewise link east and west in a visionary venture celebrating the power of music to transform lives as it also revives and rebuilds Afghan musical traditions.