Album: Alireza Ghorbani and Dorsaf Hamdani, Ivresses (Accords Croises)

These young singers – one Iranian, the other Tunisian – create music which is quintessentially of the Persian classical tradition.

It's a setting of verses by Omar Khayyam whose poetry is rarely sung, because composers have always regarded it as too sacred. Accompanied on the lute, spike-fiddle and percussion, the verses set by the Iranian composer Ali Ghamsary take graceful wing: "Awake! For morning in the bowl of night/ Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight".