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Ever since her youth, the singer Natasa Mirković has been fascinated by the hardly-known Sephardic songs from her native Bosnia-Herzegovina. With the new program EN EL AMOR she is fulfilling a long-held dream. She sets off on a personal journey using arrangements of traditional Sephardic songs. The ballads, wedding songs and romances tell everyday stories about love, transience and longing. Nataša Mirković carefully frees these songs from any pathos, reduces them down to the essentials and presents us with folk songs of breathtaking poetry and simplicity.
Additionally, she invites two congenial partners on board who, like Mirković, are highly versed in diverse musical worlds and genres and are masters of their instruments:
As a serpent player (the ancestor of the tuba), Michel Godard is a musical wanderer who has a deep and broad understanding of music and crosses between the worlds of Baroque music and jazz with ease. With his playing, he explores over and over again his own limits, creating new worlds of sound through brilliant improvisation, a flexibility on the instrument and innovation.
Jarrod Cagwin, performing on oriental percussion instruments, is a master of groove and is a true magician - an artist who, like no other in the world, is at home in Indian and Middle Eastern percussion. His musical spirit and simplicity in the performance, his passion for innovation and enormous precision on the instrument sets him apart from others. Jarrod Cagwin is known around the world for his unique sound on the frame drum.
Nataša Mirković was inspired by Jagoda Flory from Sarajevo, the artist and Grande Dame of Sephardic music. As a singer, musician, composer, teacher and ethnomusicologist who emigrated to the United States, she not only collected Sephardic songs from her home, she also recorded them, arranged them anew and released albums such as Kantikas Di Mi Nona and Memories of Sarajevo in order to prevent Sephardic songs from Bosnia and Herzegovina from falling into oblivion.

Die bosnische Sängerin Nataša Mirković und der serbische Bassspieler Nenad Vasilic rufen mit ihrem neuen Projekt soul*motion Erinnerungen an die jugoslawische Rock- und Popmusik der 70er und 80er Jahre wach. Die persönliche Auswahl ihrer Lieblingssongs bekommt durch die individuelle Besetzung von Stimme und Kontrabass eine neue Färbung. Es gab in den 60iger, 70iger, 80iger und die beginnenden 90iger Jahren sehr fruchtbare künsterische Zeiten in Ex-Jugoslawien. Es waren Zeiten eines jungen, avantgardistischen, mutigen und grenzenlosen Engagements in der Kunst und Kultur. Sarajevo war einerseits geografisches Zentrum des Landes, aber auch im Zentrum der Musik und der Kinokunst. Es lag etwas Neues und Frisches in der Luft, auch in Zagreb, Belgrad , Ljubljana und Skopje . Die Jahre sind vorüber gegangen. Und wir haben es nicht einmal bemerkt, weil wir so damit beschäftigt waren, uns an die Orte zu wenden, wo Menschen kreativ waren, wo sie auf der Bühne ihrem Ausdruck freien Lauf lassen konnten.

Nataša Mirković and Pippo Corvino are bring an old tradition of Music from Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosna in their Program, in a clear and profound sound and deep expression. The beauty of the music is represented by reduction and elevation of the essence by creating as much space as possible and meeting the music in her own depth and simplicity.

"Sacrilege! A monument of bourgeois concert-hall culture is demolished! Where art connoisseurs normally contemplate the depths of their own souls to dark, romantic sounds, there now remains no room for sentimentality. For the Winterreise (“Winter Journey”) in the version by Nataša Mirković and Matthias Loibner is a skeleton. It leads the text and the music back to the essence, to an attitude that oscillates between laconism and pathos, and was already conceived in this ambivalence by Schubert. Man as the plaything of the emotions, as sufferer of fate and simultaneously as its sovereign – a Romantic topos that is often enjoyed with piano-beclouded melancholy. This Winterreise doesn’t give him a chance. It is bold and direct, present, and at the same time fragile, an approach to the poetry that could hardly be more honest." Ralf Dombrowski"…On one hand this is brilliant: taking a cue from the cycle's last song, the performers re-cast all of the songs to the plaintive, rustic, poignant sound of a real hurdy-gurdy, whose unique voice lends an eerie, earthy character that haunts the singer's every mood and step and emotion. The droning, the crude yet spot-on articulation of melody, the rudimentary suggestion of Schubert's harmony--all of this combined with soprano Nataša Mirkovićs extraordinary expressive versatility--adds up to a performance that successfully rethinks, reconstructs, and returns these songs to roots that even Schubert might not have known they had. Reduced to such bare elements, and cast in the real folk-world of the song's narrator, we are taken on a very different winter's journey from the more genteel one colored and shaped by the modern grand piano and recital hall. As you might expect, some of Schubert's accompaniments adapt better than others to the hurdy-gurdy's relatively limited range of expression and particularly its harmonic capabilities. But that doesn't really hinder Matthias Loibner, a master who proves more than able to render the essence of Schubert's structures while not fearing to make certain judicious alterations more idiomatically appropriate to his instrument. After listening to this several times I then took the Score and followed it as I listened again. For those so inclined I highly recommend this approach. You will be impressed with the artful adaptations, not only regarding the representation of harmonies and rhythms, but in the way both performers so affectingly capture the moods of Schubert's original songs and the meaning of Müller's poetry. Schubert's Winterreise for some reason tends to invite experimentation, alteration, reconstruction, deconstruction, etc. It's been reworked and recast in versions for saxophone, various quartets, winds, percussion, accordion. But this one definitely is no gimmick. It's a serious--and winning--effort to realize Schubert's songs not in the world of the parlor for which they were written but in the actual world of the singer who lives them. Of course, there's no substitute for Schubert's original conceptions, but there's definitely room for a new and profoundly engaging interpretation such as this one. Highly recommended !" David Vernier, ClassicsToday

Michel Godard | Nataša Mirković | Luciano Biondini | Jarrod Cagwin RISPLENDENTI, RIVERSI Nataša Mirković – vocalsMichel Godard – serpent, electric bassLuciano Biondini – accordionJarrod Cagwin – percussion Nataša Mirković and Michel Godard met for the recording of “En El Amor”, a re-reading of the Sephardic songs that the young singer listened to in Sarajevo, her hometown. A project that has received great acclaim from international critics, especially in Germany.Today the two musicians continue in the search for the relationship between ancient and contemporary music in an original production of the Festival Fabbrica Europa.Risplendenti, Riversi combines well-known Italian music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to Balkan compositions to be rediscovered (such as “Bugarscchica” by the Croatian poet Petar Hektorovic, printed in Venice at the end of the 16th century) and which dialogue with the improvisations and compositions of the performers themselves, in a play between ancient and modern.

The soundtrack from "In the Land of Blood and Honey" was produced by Angelina Jolie, Robert Townson and Academy Award-winning composer Gabriel Yared. The soundtrack echoes themes from the film and includes a selection of songs from the Balkans. Two featured songs are Miss Sarajevo and When The Heart Dies. First released by U2 in 1995, Miss Sarajevo is performed by Luciano Pavarotti and Passengers. When The Heart Dies, by award winning composer Gabriel Yared is performed by acclaimed singer and actress Nataša Mirković-De Ro and also features Rade Serbedzija, Dado Dzihan and BOMBAJ STAMPA. The soundtrack is currently available through iTunes and the CD will be released on January 10, 2012. Proceeds from the soundtrack will be used to help fund SOS Children's Villages programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.