Esin
Yardimli
Alves
Pereira

Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira is dedicated to various platforms of independent artistry and musicianship. She performs, composes and produces in styles that expand from early music to heavy metal. She plays most instruments that at least resemble a violin and some more.

She is a researcher of medieval culture and writes fiction works as a form of escapism and historical articles for sharing her passion for things worth seeing under a different light. Her translations of medieval Iberian poetry to English is part of a book in the making.

She is the co-founder and the vielle player of the early music formation The Wandering Bard (TWB Ensemble) that brings together mythological storytelling and historically informed performances of renaissance and medieval music.

Esin is the sound engineer to all things CordaSonora. She also directs and produces video material and design visuals for various musical formations.

Her music is enjoyed by +40K monthly listeners. Her solo albums and other collaborations can be found on all major music streaming platforms under her name. Her latest release KIANIS: Homage to Carmilla, a violin-heavy metal extravaganza is a statement of her striking imagination and stylistic richness.

She is the co-director of the Portugal based medieval music festivals CMML and DMMB.

Heavy Metal

KIANIS – Homage to Carmilla

Violin Meets Vampiress: A fiery, cinematic, and uncompromising instrumental heavy metal experience that pushes the boundaries of the violin

by Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira

Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira, known for her Celtic and Nordic albums, orchestral works for RPG players, and medieval performances with her ensemble The Wandering Bard, makes her heavy metal debut with KIANIS – Homage to Carmilla, a five-part, 12-minute EP. Paying tribute to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic classic Carmilla, Esin gives voice through her violin to the long-overshadowed lesbian vampire, weaving a dark, cinematic soundscape that evokes power, passion, and defiance. Featuring drums by XI of GAEREA and guitars and bass by Ricardo Alves Pereira, the EP fuses orchestral intensity with old-school metal grit. KIANIS stands as a bold statement that the violin can lead, not just accompany, in heavy metal; a dream long matured in Esin’s creative vision and finally brought to life.

PREMIUM CONTENT OF THE MONTH

Behind the Scenes Part: 7

On KIANIS - Homage to Carmilla

by Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira

Get to connect with the vampiress, the band, the story, and the woman behind the project.

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Ocrhestral Works

The Songbook of Tchinar

Started off as soundtracks for a podcast series, The Songbook of Tchinar volumes became a series of releases tailored for D&D and RPG enthusiasts, to use during their gameplays.

Click to listen to all three volumes:

If you wish to get to know Tchinar better, click here to read A Talk With Tchinar.

In the third volume of “The Songbook of Tchinar” series, Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira invites listeners to join her on a daring musical voyage. With a fierce dance tune, she dares the audience to scare death off its bones, while in a heartwarming ballad, she weaves through lament and hope, inviting all to share in the journey of the heart.

In the second volume of The Songbook of Tchinar, she creates a majestic and striking musical environment suitable for storytelling and living in a fantasy world where magic doesn’t only live within; where audience is invited to yearn for more and get driven to dare.

Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira’s own compositions; orchestrated, played, and produced by herself, provide the DMs with the background music for their epic battle scenes, tearjerker moments of love and loss, and the mead smelling inns where campaigners find a moment to gamble, gossip or gloat.

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Premium Content Stories 

In her “past life” Esin was a three times published writer of fantasy fiction and novels that sold thousands. Nowadays she works on stories of 10 to 30 minutes reading length.
(reading order not required to enjoy the works)

(her favorite!)

Ensemble Work Examples

The Wandering Bard

TWB Ensemble is celebrating their reach to 1M listeners worldwide!

The Wandering Bard (a.k.a. TWB Ensemble) merges qualities of early music with the everlasting tradition of storytelling. Inspired by the traditions of bards, the ensemble performs and produces their repertoire accompanied by a narrative that shape their manuscript based arrangements and ties the beginning of the concert to the end.

The sixth album by the TWB Ensemble (The Wandering Bard) is an exhilarating journey through sound, a musical marvel that breathes new life into the medieval Cantigas de Santa Maria, attributed to Alfonso X, the Wise, a visionary Iberian king of the 13th century embellished by a legend from Leyriath.

Read the story related to the album here

TWB Ensemble presents yet another legend from the “Manuscripts of Leyriath”, which can be musically experienced through repertoire from Renaissance Iberia, as well as listened in a storytelling style by the end of the album. “The Song of Lumino” tells of companionship, magic, beauty and most importantly, power of music; what it can bring, as much as take away.

Read the story related to the album here

TWB Ensemble’s 4th album, released on the 800th year celebration of the birth of King Alfonso X El Sabio, brings the audience to medieval times with Cantigas de Santa Maria which are attributed to the king himself. At the end of the album a musical narrative is presented, inviting the audience to imagine through this music.

Read the story related to the album here

SOLO WORKS

My Vielle and the Rest

“I neither live nor die,
From the lowest depths to the highest stars,
The chosen flower, filled with great beauties.

And you will enchant the enchanter, my vielle,
For there is reason to my pain,
But roots are what one keeps.

As breaks the dawn, when winter returns,
In the shade of an olive tree, I have in you my good hope.
Hoist the gall from me, blossom sprung from a single root,

I’ll go far away if my heart wants to follow.”

(This is not a poem written by one person. It is constructed by assembling quotations from songs of troubadours, trobairitz and other valuable people of the medieval ages whose music is found in My Vielle and the Rest.)

My Vielle and the Rest is a collection of 12th and 13th century songs, mainly but not only composed by troubadours and trouvairitz, presented as instrumental music in their most profound and most candlelit form. Only the bonus track is originally an instrumental piece found to be notated at a later century. The entire album is a duo between the instrument vielle and the silence, as hinted by the title. Each track is the result of a thorough research starting from the (if available multiple) manuscript/s, and a translation work that swims through Old Occitanian, Latin and other languages songs were originally written in, to get the essence of the song out without using the human voice. Perfomed by Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira on her instrument Venus the Vielle, an instrument funded by The Wandering Bard supporters and made specially for her by Orlando Trindade, this album is made to experience the silence, enjoy the darkness and cherish everything one finds within.

Three singles from the album “My Vielle and the Rest” were released during the album preparation. “Caritas abundat in omnia” by Hildegard von Bingen is a piece with a deep, dark and determined air, while Gaucélm Faiditz’s “Lo gens cors onratz” is an inviting, bittersweet and soothing musical wonder, followed by “Si ai perdut mon saber” by Ponç d’Ortafà, a melody so magical that it is uncertain what the audience can find in it regarding happiness or sadness.

Solo WORKS

World
Music

Albums in pursue of the authentic sonorities of land and culture; for now Celtic and Nordic.

Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira presents her strong connection with Celtic music through sets of high spirited and exuberant Irish folk tunes, sentient O’Carolan classics and some of her originals. The album sets ground for the audience to engage in centuries old yet still fresh traditions.

Wrapped up in historical and mythological research on the look out for folkloric authenticity, this album focuses on sonorities of Scandinavian folk music from the 19th century with an authentic approach.

Gallery

Contact for versions/sizes suitable for publications.

EDUCATION AND PROJECTS

The Multi-Genre Approach

She began participating in non-classical music formations during her early years of conservatory education in IUSC and CSMV while on numerous talent grants; meanwhile she kept insisting on discovering new styles with her instrument at a time when such interests had to be kept rather “hidden” in the classical music academical realm from which she received her BoM degree cum laude. She then pursued further education in CvA under the AHK talent grant.

Among plenty of others, ensembles and orchestras she participated in in a span of 15 years either as a band/orchestra member or as a guest musician include Vigo430, Metropole Orkest, Na Rota Do Peregrino (early music ensemble), Dot Quartet (jazz&folk string quartet), Quintessences (modern collaboration string quartet), Ikarai (modern jazz ensemble), Ensemble MED (medieval/sefardi music ensemble), Istanbul Swing (jazz manouche band), Almora (symphonic metal band) and Noesis Ensemble in which she did the musical arrangements for the sextet.

It can take a village to raise a musician. Beautiful people Esin was guided by on the path she is still walking include Genoveva Burova, Bahar Biricik, Gülden Teztel, Sonat Mutver, Erdem Çöloğlu, Mario Peris Salom, Emma Breedveld, Jeffrey Bruinsma, Walter Stuhlmacher, Christian Elsässer, Mariangela Demurtas and Metehan Köktürk among many others.

She performs with violin, viola, vielle, rebec, electric violin and numerous percussion instruments.

Appears on

Past
Projects
and
Concerts

Examples from a versatile repertoire of collaborations and participations.

Recording session solo violin
11th Golden Indie Music Awards (GIMA) winner for Best Jazz Album and Best Jazz Song (5 Minutes in Between)

Recording session string section
“Tasteful dream-pop, with dreamy synth-chords, ornaments and soulful singing, the orchestra really shines.” – progjazz.nl

Recording session string section

Perfomed by the Metropole Academy, 2016
Conducted by Tijn Wybenga
Composition: Tijn Wybenga
Lyrics: Marína Ósk Þórólfsdóttir
Concert-master/solo: Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira
(Violin solo after 03:10)

Guitar/Vocals/Composition: Angelo Boltini
Live at Wisseloord, 2017

Jong Metropole in Radio Kootwijk, 2017
Performance excerpt from Snarky Puppy – Atchafalaya

Venus as a Boy – Björk
Arranged by Kevin Halporn
Live at Blue Note Amsterdam, 2016

Music & Lyrics: YenTing Lo
Voice: YenTing Lo
Piano: Tommaso Perazzo
Violin: Esin Yardımlı Alves Pereira
CvA Studio Amsterdam, 2017
(Violin solo after 02:10)

Other works

Writings

Esin is a three times published writer of fantasy fiction that sold thousands. Her first publication happened when she was 12 with a short story named Kül (Ash), on the same year her novel Kitap Kahramanı (The Book Hero) followed, in which she had the motivation to make kids read more books while keeping things interesting for the young readers (main charachters of Esin’s book were looking out to find a cool book for their lost-in-the-real-world “book charachter” friend). Later on her second novel, connecting the expectations about after life to the needs and assumptions of the living through a love story between two women called Sonun Sonrası (After the End) got published when she was 19, followed by many other stories.

Currently she is working on “Leyriath: Retold by Esin” that will soon find itself a place among audio books and ebooks in fantastical literature. Chapters from this work can be found in the Premium Content page reserved for CordaSonora Family Members.

A short story from 2004

Sparkle

Enjoy a story Esin Yardimli Alves Pereira wrote as a kiddo, translated to English. She did not alter a single thing during the translation process and delivered each phrase most accurately to the version written by her when she was 13.

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