Becca Stevens & The Secret Trio TAQS.IM Middle Eastern Music

Antranig Kzirian sits down with Becca Stevens, Ara Dinkjian, Ismail Lumanovski, and Tamer Pinarbaşi to discuss their new collaboration entitled "Becca Stevens and The Secret Trio".
2021 GRAMMY-nominated Becca Stevens was in awe witnessing The Secret Trio’s performance at the GroundUP Music Festival a few years ago. The Secret Trio is made up of an oudist, kanunist and clarinetist who came together to create a new type of chamber music, combining the elements of sound, texture and rhythm with new and interesting approaches to their instruments. They perform original pieces and traditional melodies that fuse the microtonal modes and improvisation of the Middle East, dance beats of the Balkans, and elements of jazz, rock, classical and world music. The Secret Trio has played at the most prestigious venues throughout Turkey, including Cemal Reşit Rey Hall.
Michael League, Snarky Puppy bandleader and founder of GroundUP Music, wrote most of the songs with Becca for the Becca Stevens & The Secret Trio album along with producing it. The record focuses on blending Becca’s effortless vocal talent and exquisite compositions with The Secret Trio’s mastered musical traditions. Becca is a highly respected collaborator and has worked with the likes of David Crosby, Jacob Collier, Brad Mehldau, Esperanza Spalding, and more.
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Discussion of the project from the artists’ perspective. Dinkjian comments that it’s about music and people, and working with such talented individuals makes the music the easy part. Stevens enjoys playing with The Secret Trio (TST) and they all have a great relationship in the collaboration, having met in the studio after learning about each other at a festival in Florida. Dinkjian explains that Michael League flew to Turkey to see a TST concert and then invited TST to perform at the GroundUp music festival in Miami. Stevens was a performer at the same festival, and asked League for the “can’t miss” set and League immediately mentioned TST – Stevens was blown away by the group, and her musician colleague Jamie Haddad said “that’s your next band”, and League arranged for them to all meet and plan a project to work together. Discussion of the dynamics of bringing different artists in a fusion collaboration together to meld their talents and work to put out new material. Dinkjian explained that the recording was a bit of a different experience and the tunes were being learned in the studio by TST, as Stevens and League had written several tunes – this was a departure for Dinkjian, as he writes, arranges and rehearses, and executes compositions in the studio, whereas this was more of a creative process unfolding in real-time in the studio, and this stretched out his experience on the oud and was an exciting situation and a gift for him to learn from working with Stevens – and Dinkjian’s background is in some ways similar and different to the rest of TST’s members as is of Armenian descent, but was also born in America. The objective was to make the music bigger with their instruments. Dinkjian notes the significance and example of the album “West meets East” by Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, which was one of the first fusion records from back in the mid-1960s. In relation, this new style surfacing with Stevens was something to notice and experience for TST. Lumanovski explains that the album unfolding was quite natural. Melodically simple structures emerged and were easy for the group to incorporate and together they found a common feeling and fit to project in their performance. Lumanovski remarks that Western music has a different feel rhythmically and this was an exposure for the group and it was an essential part of the recording, but concedes that it was a challenge to reach that point. Discussion of “We Were Wrong” and the modal characteristics of the melody with contrasting vocals, and how this juxtaposition is not common in western music. Stevens rem