ANOUAR BRAHEM “After the Last Sky”

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ARTIST

Anouar Brahem

ALBUM TITLE

“After the Last Sky”

LABEL

ECM

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If the Lebanese Rabih Abou-Khalil, with his fiery temperament and extraordinary technical command, represents for the oud what John McLaughlin is for the jazz guitar, then the Tunisian Anouar Brahem may be seen as the instrument’s equivalent of Bill Frisell: less a virtuoso than a philosopher and poet of sound.

Active since the early 1990s, Brahem first came to international prominence through Manfred Eicher, who welcomed him into the ECM family. With After the Last Sky, the oud master from Halfaouine, in the medina of Tunis, delivers his twelfth album as a leader. In fact, if one also includes Madar – recorded with Jan Garbarek and Shaukat Hussain – and Charmediterranéen, where he appears as a guest with the Orchestre National de Jazz under the direction of Paolo Damiani, this becomes the fourteenth recording of his career, excluding his extensive work for theatre and film.

Brahem’s music exists outside ordinary notions of time. It possesses an elegance of rare refinement and a dreamlike, almost arcane quality capable of transporting the listener elsewhere. Within this rarefied sonic world, the Arabic tradition – and particularly the maqam, the improvisational system that shapes melodic development, tonal organisation and musical form – opens itself to other languages and influences.

This album once again reveals traces of classical and contemporary music, a deep affection for the folk traditions of the Mediterranean – at times the oud seems almost to become a flamenco guitar – alongside echoes of Africa and, inevitably, the spirit of jazz. In “Dancing Under the Meteorites”, one can even detect surprising resonances of Astor Piazzolla’s nuevo tango.

Alongside two long-standing collaborators – the ever-magnificent Dave Holland, who serves as the project’s beating heart and emotional centre, and Django Bates, whose piano textures create a bridge between past and present, between the music’s archaic roots and its freer impulses – a crucial role is played by the quartet’s newest member, cellist Anja Lechner.

Indeed, Lechner emerges as one of the album’s defining voices. Her instrument occupies a central position both timbrally and melodically, providing some of the recording’s most memorable moments and contributing decisively to the character of a truly exemplary work.

Ivo Franchi

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