"Radio Rossii", introducing two publications by the remarkable Tuvan singer Sainkhoo Namchylak, which were released in recent years by LEO Records in Great Britain, discusses both the projects and the singer herself.

The first project was made with a percussionist from the USA Jarrod Cagwin.  He is a universal, unusual percussionist, and the situation that led to the meeting of these two musicians was not completely ordinary either. Sainkhoo Namchylak very much likes spontaneous improvisation  in conditions which are close to her nature . And since she is Tuvan and very close to natural music, regardless of all her incredible education, nature is alive in her. Such circumstances arose at one point.  There was a festival in Vienna " at the Odeon Theatre, named "In Trance". This is an absolutely accurate description of how Sainkho gets into music. The Tuvan singer herself is a virtual bridge between the naturalness of Tuvan nation and Western civilization.

Impressions of the Dun Huang  cave Buddhist temples in China served as the subject of improvisation for Sainkho and her partner;  Sainkho visited the caves, and they presented unbelievable opportunities fro exotic vocal techniques mastered by Sainkho Namchylak in such brilliant manner.

As far as her partner is concerned, Jarrod Cagwin has mastered many non-European techniques of percussions, which he started to learn when a student at Berkeley, and later transferred to avant-garde scene in New York. He has experience of playing with many representatives of ethno-jazz sphere, including Lebanese oud performer Rabih Abou-Khalil.  His delicacy and ability to play with others next to Sainkho in the leading role is very noticeable in this disc, and in the song which we will now hear as well.

As far as  the tendency to music programming, traditional for Sainkho, which sounds even in a free form, here it is expressed in preambles to each of the four compositions on this disc. It has been said about the songs on Sainkho's album that they express visions and images generated in a person who falls into a trance in those branching caves.

This was recorded in Vienna at a concert named "In Trance". It took place in 2006. So this is really not very new. Nevertheless, this project was released by LEO Records within the last hundred of their  CD's.

Today, we are listening to "Not very new news". It is our third immersion in these new releases. I think that this is a unique opportunity for many to listen to music made by musicians from our homeland. And I consider Sainkho Namchylak, regardless of the fact that she lives in Ireland, one of our musicians.

Another of her projects is also Chinese. If the previous project was created on the basis of Chinese impressions of cave temples in Dun Huang, which Sainkho has visited, the following recording "Tea Opera" was created right in China in October 2008. And again it is a duet - Sainkho Namchylak and Dickson Dee. It is not simply about a tea ceremony, but about a certain mystery, divination from tea leaved. Everybody knows the expression "divination from coffee grounds", but here it is divination from tea leaves. Sainkho has always been interested in Chinese culture very much, first of all in the musical tradition.

Many years ago she was in a program "Beskonechnoye priblizhenie" (Infinite proximity) on live air. We have often talked together about various musical cultures, and that time she admitted, and that was in the 90's that right then she was extremely interested in the musical culture of China and was studying it thoroughly.

This project, just like the previous one, is a result of her travels and performances in China. Project "Tea Opera" consists of 10 histories, devoted to the stages of tea ceremony. It is not simply a matter of drinking tea with some procedure, but a culture of meditation hundreds of years old, a way of a human becoming one with nature by the way of tea ceremony.