Anouar Brahem

2CD SET

The music of Souvenance, by turns graceful, hypnotic, austere, and starkly dramatic, follows Tunisian oud-master AnouarBrahem’slast ECM album, The Astounding Eyes of Rita after a five-year gap. “It took a long time to write this music,” he acknowledges. Early plans to document the progress of the “Rita” quartet, which had grown to become a compellingly dynamic group in concert, were set aside. “I was feeling a need to attempt something new.” Then, at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, came the great political upheavals –accompanied by “immense fears, joys and hopes” –which began in Tunisia and swept like wildfire through the region. Fully absorbed by daily news of popular uprisings, collapsing dictatorships, insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, Brahemfound his emotional world “monopolized by the political”. It was not the right moment to be writing music: “I had to wait for the pressure to fall, before I could resume work.”

PERSONNEL:

• ANOUAR BRAHEM, oud
• FRANÇOIS COUTURIER, piano
• KLAUS GESING, bass clarinet, soprano sax
• BJÖRN MEYER, bass
• ORCHESTRA DELLA SVIZZERA ITALIANA (Conducted by PIETRO MIANITI)

Lugano, Italy, May 25-28, 2014

TRACKS:

• CD ONE:V
• 01. Improbable day
• 02. Ashen sky
• 03. Deliverance
• 04. Souvenance
• 05. Tunis at dawn
• 06. Youssef'ssong

• CD TWO:
• 01. January
• 02. Like a dream
• 03. On the road
• 04. Kasserine
• 05. Nouvelle vague