When avant-songwriter Léonore Boulanger met Iranian musician Maam-Li Merati at a show in Paris in 2011, it kick-started an engagement with Persian classical music culminating in this gorgeous collection of songs that, while steeped in the traditions that birthed them, have a freshness and elegance that seems brand new.

Léonore Boulanger immersed herself in the Radif, a collection of ancient melodies that are the basis of Iranian traditional music, using them as musical settings (mainly in the dastgah and avaz forms) to accompany a series of Persian love poems from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Maam-Li Merati is an Iranian musician that was born in Kermanshah, near the Iraqi border. In addition to having a Doctor in Musicology, he has worked with artists such as Iranian singer Shahram Nazeri and French novelist and Luis Bunuel’s screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (for a project devoted to 13 th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi). Shortly after their mee...

When avant-songwriter Léonore Boulanger met Iranian musician Maam-Li Merati at a show in Paris in 2011, it kick-started an engagement with Persian classical music culminating in this gorgeous collection of songs that, while steeped in the traditions that birthed them, have a freshness and elegance that seems brand new.

Léonore Boulanger immersed herself in the Radif, a collection of ancient melodies that are the basis of Iranian traditional music, using them as musical settings (mainly in the dastgah and avaz forms) to accompany a series of Persian love poems from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Maam-Li Merati is an Iranian musician that was born in Kermanshah, near the Iraqi border. In addition to having a Doctor in Musicology, he has worked with artists such as Iranian singer Shahram Nazeri and French novelist and Luis Bunuel’s screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (for a project devoted to 13 th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi). Shortly after their meeting, Maam-Li Merati started to teach the art of Persian classical music to Léonore Boulanger, a young French musician that released three albums on the multi-faceted label and music collective Le Saule.

Together Maam-Li Merati and Léonore Boulanger recorded some first lyrical odes, some dastgāhs for two voices and traditional string instruments that would later be released as part of the La Maison d’Amour double vinyl on Okraïna. Later, Matthieu Ferrandez, church organist and researcher in electronic music, joined them, weaving a cosmic lace, with the sighs of harmonium and acoustic organs.

In the ancient modes of the Radif – a repertoire classified during the Qajar dynasty between 1840 and 1920 – the love poetry of the 13th and 14th century is replayed, brought back to life.

“The sounds here are truly absorbing.” – The Wire Magazine
“In La Maison D’amour, the everlasting flame burns pure and strong.” – We Need No Swords...

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