"Tales of Scapes" from lute to AI challenges even the concept of music

The “Liburn Jupolli” ensemble is a post-stylistic musical group that challenges the boundaries of genres and brings together musicians from different scenes. As such, it has come with the premiere of the performance “Tales of Scapes”, which challenges the traditional forms of the concert, but also of music itself. The members of the ensemble are immersed in a musical game that has included a conversation between the past and the future: on one side the lute and the shepherd's fiddle, on the other synthesizers, laptops and a collaboration with Artificial Intelligence through “Suno AI”

On the stage of the National Theater of Kosovo, illuminated with dark colors that have created a ritual and futuristic atmosphere at the same time, the ensemble "Liburn Jupolli" has brought the premiere of the performance "Tales of Scapes" - a sound and stage show that challenges traditional concert forms, building a universe where electronics, invented instruments and post-stylistic music create an experience that is more experienced than heard. 

All works are from the ensemble's debut album, which will be released in a few months, and this premiere came as part of the 13th edition of the international feminist festival "FemArt", following the premiere it had in South Korea.

The “Liburn Jupolli” ensemble is a post-stylistic musical group that challenges the boundaries of genres and brings together musicians from diverse scenes such as jazz, metal, electronica, Balkan folklore, contemporary classical and experimental pop. It was founded by composer and innovator Liburn Jupolli and serves as a sound laboratory, using traditional, invented instruments and digital technology to create a new musical language.

On Tuesday night, dressed in ceremonial robes, the ensemble members immersed themselves in a musical game that involved a conversation between the past and the future: on one side the lute and shepherd’s flute, on the other synthesizers, laptops and a collaboration with Artificial Intelligence through “Suno AI”. Liburn Jupolli himself, at the center of the performative gravity, played piano, theremin, lute, çifteli and synthesizer, leading an ensemble that included musicians such as Yllka Simnica on flute, kaval and ocarina, Galdon Reçica on the Octo instrument invented by Jupolli and with sharki, Fisnik Behluli on trumpet, Philip Konrad Labhart from Switzerland on trumpet and shoka flute, and Granit Havolli on drums and percussion.

The show, described as a “post-stylistic stage journey,” has deliberately experimented with musical structure and content. It has not adhered to the rules of classical construction or division by type of music, but has developed through sounds that have created new landscapes. The audience in front of it has not expected a clear narrative, but an extension of sensation, where the sound of the late Shaqir Hoti’s ocarina is intertwined with sound signals created by an algorithm.
For over an hour, the ensemble brought sounds that shifted the audience's spatial and temporal perception. In this unusual dialogue between music, stage, and technology, "Tales of Scapes" demonstrated Jupolli's commitment to continuous artistic exploration, a commitment that knows no stylistic, temporal, or technological boundaries.

At a special moment in the performance, as a guest, the writer and actor Shpëtim Selmani, at the center of the stage – without a mask, dressed in black and white in contrast to the ritual clothes of the ensemble – stood up and gave voice to a series of powerful phrases related to war, art and global pain with a microphone. At the center of his monologue was the destruction of art, and he illustrated this with expressions from human disasters, among which he mentioned the ruins in Gaza, the grain crises in Ukraine, and other tragedies of political and human proportions. The tone of the speech was ironic, provocative and clearly critical of Israel and Russia, poetically denouncing the role of the powers in the destruction of life and culture.

Another sad and emotionally charged moment in the performance was when musician Arbresha Latifaj, wearing a black veil, took center stage and began to sing only with her vocals, without a word. Her voice, slow and deep, seemed to come from another world, like a lament for a great loss. Under the dim lighting and the smoke that slowly moves over the stage, her figure creates a ritual state, where music turns into prayer and pain into art. This ritual was a moment where the silence of the audience became part of the performance, while the member of the duo “Shkodra elektronik”, Kolë Laca, played the piano.

Following the performance of “Tales of Scapes,” Liburn Jupolli shared an in-depth look at the ensemble’s creative process and its experimentation with artificial intelligence as a co-creator in music. He explained that the “Suno” app is used to create unique atmospheres during the performance.

"Here we have 'Sunna' as an application, which through text, like many of the GPTs used today, creates different moments, which can be assigned what genre, how long, with text, and so on. We mainly use it to create different atmospheres that you listen to. This time I used it alone, other times we are developing it so that we have it as a standard part, where certain moments during the performance like in jazz for example, which are unknown, due to the different developments that occur during the song, we leave it to Artificial Intelligence, what is assigned is the writing and this is given on sheets to each of the performers and they are given a sign when to play that prompt and a music is created that has never been created before", explained the founder of the ensemble that bears his name, explaining the place of Artificial Intelligence within the performance.

Jupolli has emphasized that this project is only an early phase of a much broader artistic vision that he intends to develop, building a new musical language that brings together different stylistic elements and collective energy.

"I think that putting it all together is a challenge, putting together what I have been working on for a long time, this is not it either, this is a phase of what I want to develop, this material that you heard is only the first album and it is specifically this music for that time and for that period, it is different material that has been developed since 2017 in Paris, until today, and I am working to make it alive, but it is not yet in its original form, this is a phase it has reached," Jupolli told KOHĖN. 

The costumes and stage aesthetics, according to him, come from a long-standing desire to deeply explore the spirit of local folklore, through a new conceptual and emotional approach.

"The costume is a long-standing desire of mine for an ensemble that plays the music that I make, which we develop together, so this phase and this album, these are parts of the first album, which we will promote somewhere around August, September. We are finishing the mixing of the album, I believe this is how close this music is. It comes from a desire to explore that metaenergy of folklore in us," he said.

He has underlined that the ensemble's main goal is to offer a sincere, shared and deeply spiritual experience, which combines genres, origins and musical identities into a unique community of sounds.

"I hope you liked it, our goal is to offer something very sincere from our work, from our soul, from our community as musicians. There are musicians here from different scenes, from different musical affinities, there are also people who are into jazz, there are those who are into metal, in classical, who have never done it together, so we are trying to make that music together," Jupolli added.

Granit Havolli, the drummer of the "Liburn Jupolli" ensemble, has described the experience in this project as a challenge not in the technical aspect of interpretation, but in the concept of composition itself.
"The challenge is not perhaps in the way we interpret the instruments, but it is a challenge as a concept in how it is organized, that is, if this type of music is composed, which makes it a bit challenging even the genres of music that are intertwined with each other, perhaps that is the biggest challenge, to understand as a concept what we want to present," drummer Havolli told KOĞAN after the end of the show.

The ensemble's trumpeter, Fisnik Behluli, expressed his enthusiasm for the concert, describing it as a special pleasure. As a part of the ensemble since its founding, he emphasized the extraordinary energy that was created among the musicians during the performance.

"It was a great pleasure tonight to collaborate and play in concert with this ensemble, of which I have been a part since its founding. There was an extraordinary energy tonight from the ensemble, and I hope that the audience welcomed it and enjoyed it with us," said trumpeter Behluli.

The music that this ensemble creates is not subject to traditional genre divisions, but rather encompasses them, creating a new form that challenges the very way music is understood, and in addition to this experimentation, the "FemArt" festival in this edition, which will continue until June 21, is bringing concerts of various types and other premieres, workshops and discussions on the concept that the mind is fertile ground for new ideas.