51�Թ�

“An immense majority of people goes to buy the nuns’ sweets,” said Pipa Algarra, who in her 90 years in the southern Spanish city of Granada has come to know each of the dozens of convents’ specialties.

Albion's alterations came further up the pitch, with Pipa coming in at right wing-back for Darnell Furlong and Alex Mowatt recalled in a tactical reshuffle that led to Thomas-Asante starting on the bench.

Working with her partner Francesco Turrisi, an Italian multi-instrumentalist, Giddens began assembling an international dream team for this year’s festival that included members of Silkroad including Wu Man, the Chinese pipa virtuoso, and Kayhan Kalhor, a kamancheh player from Iran.

The rest of the weekend, between morning meditations and moon viewings — and all of the “liminal spaces” where Giddens says so much magic can happen — will include an eclectic brew of chamber works, solo improvisations, pipa tunes from the seventh century and ancient Persian music, and newer works by Chinese composers and several pieces by Iranian women, such as Aida Shirazi and Nina Barzegar.

The score was written in 1994 for the Kronos Quartet and the eloquent pipa virtuoso Wu Man, with the players also employing water, stones, paper and metal in music that includes classical, folk and avant-garde traditions, as well as spiritual ones.