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Lebanese-born singer Lamia Yared draws her inspiration from the Arabic, Ottoman, Sephardic, and Greek musical traditions of Asia Minor. Over the last 16 years, she has trained with renowned masters in Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece, honing her technique of Eastern chant and oud playing. On her new release for Analekta, Ottoman Splendours, Yared explores the music shared along an axis that stretches through time and space, linking Asia Minor and the modern-day Balkans to the Medieval Iberian Peninsula. Constantinople/Istanbul, Smyrna/ Izmir, Andrinople/Edirne, Thessaloniki/Selanik, Monastir/Bitola, Sarajevo/Saraybosna… these are the principal sources that connect the music of the Ottoman era to Toledo, Cordoba, Granada, and Seville, which the Sephardim were forced to flee following the Reconquista, but whose legacy is preserved through Judeo-Spanish (spoken vernacular), Ladino (semi-sacred language), and related anonymous poetic repertoires or sacred texts. But the repertoire brilliantly performed on this recording by Lamia Yared and the Ensemble Oraciones also reveals another influence in the shared Ottoman musical heritage, one shaped by the daily coexistence of the Greek, Turkish, and Sephardic communities, which, unlike the scholarly repertoires, was essentially transmitted by women. The Judeo-Spanish adaptation of the rebetiko “Kouklaki mou,” such as “Mi Chika Flor” and of the sharkı “Niçin gördüm seni,” such as “Ven, Chika Nazlia” are fine examples.