The fruit of a unique collaboration between a brilliant musical polymath and one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles specialising primarily in medieval and Renaissance polyphony – the composer Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol and Blue Heron – Lessons from Nightingales presents the world-premiere recordings of two new pieces inspired by the two principal Turkish traditions of Sufi mysticism. The Triumph (composed in 2024 for Blue Heron’s twenty-fifth birthday) sets a poem by the Bektaşi Sufi dervish Edip Harabi (1853-1917) in a dazzling sound-world created by an ensemble of voices, bowed tanbur (long-necked lute), ney (end-blown flute), and an array of percussion, weaving together elements of Turkish songs, modes, and rhythmic cycles; Renaissance counterpoint; and the Japanese court music called Gagaku. Devran (composed in 2017) honours pluralism within Islam by setting texts by Mevlevi Sufi dervishes in a two-movement a cappella piece like a motet – a staple of Renaissance European Christian music – in which the imitative style of sixteenth-century counterpoint is the main influence, while Middle Eastern makam (mode) tradition and elements of Turkish Sufi music contribute substantially to the musical effect. A distinctly jazz-influenced harmonic palette lends its glamorous colour to both pieces. Blue Heron applies its signature intensity, expressivity, and mastery of polyphony to Sanlıkol’s bewitching twenty-first century polyphony, joined in The Triumph by the virtuoso instrumentalists of Sanlıkol’s ensemble DÜNYA.