The artists participating in Balkan Clarinet Summit are doing for the interrelated traditional music of their historically intermeshed homelands as Astor Piazzolla did for tango or—in the U.S.—Guy Klucevsek for polka. They are using vernacular genres as the basis for a new art music. Backed by small ensembles and performing in Greece, Turkey, Serbia and Bulgaria, the clarinetists take their folk influences in modernist directions, abstracting the music from its communal settings and turning it into concert music without losing touch with the roots.
