Tengir-Too is a new ensemble that plays old music. The group takes its name from the mountain range that towers over the high alpine passes linking Kyrgyzstan and China, and is better known by its Chinese name, Tien Shan: “Celestial Mountains.” Kyrgyz music is rooted in the sensibility of nomads who inhabit a spectacular landscape of mountains, lakes, and pristine grasslands, where the elemental energies of wind, water, and echo, the ubiquity of birds and animals, and the legendary feats of heroes have inspired a remarkable art and technology of sound-making.

Many Kyrgyz venerate sites of spiritual power, called mazars, marked by distinctive natural phenomena: a spring or cave, a unique geological formation, or a botanical oddity, such as a grove of trees amid a landscape of barren steppe. These sites often correspond to the burial place of a saint, thus physically linking veneration of saints with offerings to spirits. The spiritual power of mazars has served as a vital locus of inspiration for Rysbek Jumabaev, a reciter of the Kyrgyz heroic epic, Manas. Through visits to mazars, Jumabaev seeks contact with the spirit of Manas, the hero of the poem.

The extroverted, bel canto vocal style performed by Kenjegül Kubatova also illustrates a connection to the particularities of place – an acoustical celebration of the alpine landscapes where singers cultivated powerful voices to entertain large numbers of guests at outdoor festivities. Singer-songwriters, called akyn, have been not only musicians, but poets, entertainers, and philosophers. The ability to improvise song texts was highly prized, and oral poetry contests, called aitysh, were a central part of traditional Kyrgyz life.

Instrumental genres also play a large role in Kyrgyz music. At the heart of these genres is the music known in Kyrgyz, a Turkic language, as küü. Whatever their subject, küüs rely on instrumental means to represent or tell a story – “programme music,” in Western terms. Performers of küü often use gesture as a means of reinforcing the music’s narrative dimension, and in some cases, provide a verbal synopsis of a küü’s plot before performing it. Some küüs display a virtuosic performance technique, while others depict complex emotions or inner states through subtle expressive means. Indeed, the literal meaning of küü is “mood,” “state,” or “temperament.” Küü also provides the root of the word for “tuning” (küülöö), suggesting the power of different musical tunings or modes to affect the human soul and psyche.

During the Soviet era, much traditional Kyrgyz music was lost or adapted to European musical ideals. Orchestras of reconstructed folk instruments replaced solo performers, and the introduction of music notation undermined orality, with its deep-rooted tradition of transmission from master to disciple.

Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, in 1991, musicians throughout Central Asia began to find their way back to older traditions. The best of them strove not simply to reproduce tradition, but to innovate within it. Nurlanbek Nyshanov, the artistic director of Tengir-Too, exemplifies such traditional innovators. His life in music was shaped both by his childhood in Naryn, a mountainous region in northern Kyrgyzstan, and by his experience as a student in the music education system created in Central Asia during the Soviet era. A graduate of Kyrgyzstan’s State Institute of Arts (now the National Conservatory), Nyshanov draws on his compositional skills to craft for small ensembles striking arrangements of repertories typically performed by solo players and singers. Unlike Soviet-era folk orchestras and consorts, however, Tengir-Too performs on traditional Kyrgyz instruments and works within the boundaries of conventional Kyrgyz musical forms, textures, and genres. “I want to uncover the whole timbral palette of Kyrgyz traditional instruments,” said Nyshanov about his work with Tengir-Too. “So many nuances, so many colours! The best way to hear and ‘see’ them is when they come together in an ensemble, where they can reveal themselves more completely.”