Efrén López & Christos Barbas: The Sea

Presenting our duet album ’Atlas’ on May 2021 at the Labyrinth Catalunya festival at the Teatre Auditori Cardedeu with Efrén López. The opening track of the album -The sea- is an open, rhythmless-melody that Christos wrote for the project “Eternal Tides” of the singer of North-Indian music, Sri-Lanka-born Hania Mariam Luthufi, intended to raise environmental consciousness about the oceans and the need for social and ecological sustainability. Here the main melody is only setting the mood and appears at the end of the track, almost as an echo of the original recording for five multi-layered neys. Efrén creates his own “sea” of string sounds, played live, through a heterodox tuning and playing technique. Efrén says: “Inspired by the melody of Christos that offers ample space for improvisation, I have put into practice an idea that I have wanted to try for many years now. I tuned two ouds, a Turkish and an Iraqui one, in such a way that the open strings of both together would c