Stephen Haynes-Taylor Ho Bynum

The Double Trio
Engine e026

Mazen Kerbaj/Birgit Ulher/Sharif Sehnaoui

3:1

Creative Sources CS 110 CD

Throughout the history of improvised music and jazz, two-trumpet sessions have never been as popular as duets between saxophonists. Oh there were dates featuring Art Framer and Donald Byrd in the 1950s, for example, and Roy Hargrove and Marlon Jordan in the 1980s, plus a whole collection of Norman Granz-instigated blowing sessions in between. But it seems as if the preferred locus for dual improvising is a commingling of many saxophone keys rather than sets of three valves.

Twenty-first century musicians don’t seem to be limited by these conventions and both of these notable CDs centre on the sounds produced by two trumpets – or a cornet in Taylor Ho Bynum’s case. Each session also includes guitar. Yet the disparity between the discs isn’t that the two brass players – Stephen Haynes is the other besides Bynum – on The Double Trio, are spelled by two guitarists and two drummers, while guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui alone provides the additional sounds besides those exhaled by trumpeters Mazen Kerbaj and Birgit Ulher on 3:1.

Rather the reason for the marked divergence in conception and creation between the CDs is that The Double Trio takes its impetus from Free Jazz, while 3:1 is in the Free Music tradition. Furthermore while the players on The Double Trio – note the echo of Ornette Coleman’s double quartet here – are for the most part playing tune-oriented music in its broadest sense, Kerbaj, Ulher and Sehnaoui are manipulating sounds.

Bynum’s seconds are guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Thomas Fujiwara, both of whom have worked with him in other situations, including his stand-alone trio. Meanwhile Haynes, a Connecticut-based arts advocate and educator, who has worked with everyone from Bill Dixon to the Dells, is backed by seldom-heard guitarist Alan Jaffe and veteran percussionist Warren Smith.

Not that the interactive polyphony splits into trio verses trio. For instance on “mm (pf)”, the second part of “Suite Miscellaneous”, both trumpeters squeeze lip-burbling Bronx cheers from their horn as the drums rattle and the dual guitars strum and pick. Progressing in a tempo close to a drunken stagger, the horns parry interjections from the guitars that turn to descending licks while the drummers beat paradiddles and flams. Eventually the brass timbres divide, with one smoothly tattooing the melody and the other ejecting skyscraper-high notes. As the piece turns to diminuendo percussion rebounds, off-centre guitar frailing meld with downward slithering trumpet lines.

In contrast, Bynum’s “YX 6C” comes complete with a rhythmically sophisticated melody, chorded in African High-Life fashion by Halvorson. As the drums roll and rebound, the cornetist’s brassy blasts shape this serpentine construction chromatically, as it’s further decorated by Haynes’ slide-whistle-like discord. While the guitarists conclude by crunching splayed runs together, one plectrumist recaps the initial theme as one drummer continues outputting ruffs.

Even more traditional – in this Free Jazz context – is the six’s treatment of Coleman’s “Broken Shadows”. When one drummer press rolls, the other splashes cymbals, as the guitarists expose a sonic rainbow of finger picking, crossing and re-crossing one another’s lines until the sprightly melody is heard again. Then as the brass players contrapuntally spin out the theme, one guitarist sounds a distorted counter-theme. On other places on the CD, wood-block smacks are heard and one of the brass men –Haynes? – outputs a series of Miles Davis-like smears and slurs on top of booming strumming from the dual guitars.

There’s nothing that overt on 3:1, concerned as it is with textures and tones rather than linear improvisation. With no hierarchical division between the front and backline, each instrument has the same prominence, with Sehnaoui’s playing as obtuse and opaque as the trumpeters’. His looping asides and pedal point string sweeps do however provide a fundamental base on which the tongue slaps, mouthpiece oscillations and spit blows that characterize much of the brass exposition can rest. Discerning Ulher’s singular contributions from Kazen’s is nearly impossible, except for passages on “0:0” where the falsetto yelps are probably from her horn and the basso slurs from his.

Most of the session is concerned with shaping dissonance into movement, with both trumpeters auditioning the results of such extended technique as air-blowing without moving the valves, buzzing the mouthpiece against a solid object, playing quick bursts of concentrated triplets and spluttering and humming through the horn’s lead tube. For his part, the guitarist slides and scrapes along the strings below the bridge and pops the strings head on with mallet-like blows. Piezo pickups may be in use, but if they’re not, somehow Sehnaoui still manages to create oscillating buzzes equivalent to the trumpeters’ droning resonation.

Essentially spherical in construction, the six-track CD is defiant in its staccato dissonance, with no crescendos or diminuendos. Instead chiming friction, yawning echoes, thick, metallic-sounding rotations and jack-hammer like patterns are followed. Tremolo tonguing and a series of onomatopoeic and animal-like tones encompassing dog yelps, feline purrs and woodpecker patterns are more prominent than traditional brass notes.

Considering these sessions plumb the limits of trumpet expression in improvisation without remotely resembling one another, both confirm the versatility of a brass instrument duo.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Double: 1. Hebeshebewebe I 2. YX 6C 3, Broken Shadows 4. Hebeshebewebe II Suite Miscellaneous 5. Triple Duo 6. mm (pf) 7. Miscellaneous 8. Kush 9. Notes from an Autumn Diary

Personnel: Double: Stephen Haynes (trumpet and cornet); Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Alan Jaffe and Mary Halvorson (guitars); Warren Smith and Thomas Fujiwara (drums)

Track Listing: 3:1: 1. 0: 0 2. 1: 0 3. 2:0 4. half-time 5. 2:1 6. 3:1

Personnel: 3:1: Mazen Kerbaj and Birgit Ulher (trumpets) and Sharif Sehnaoui (guitar)

November 14, 2008

Mazen Kerbaj/Birgit Ulher/Sharif Sehnaoui

3:1
Creative Sources CS 110 CD

Stephen Haynes-Taylor Ho Bynum

The Double Trio

Engine e026

Throughout the history of improvised music and jazz, two-trumpet sessions have never been as popular as duets between saxophonists. Oh there were dates featuring Art Framer and Donald Byrd in the 1950s, for example, and Roy Hargrove and Marlon Jordan in the 1980s, plus a whole collection of Norman Granz-instigated blowing sessions in between. But it seems as if the preferred locus for dual improvising is a commingling of many saxophone keys rather than sets of three valves.

Twenty-first century musicians don’t seem to be limited by these conventions and both of these notable CDs centre on the sounds produced by two trumpets – or a cornet in Taylor Ho Bynum’s case. Each session also includes guitar. Yet the disparity between the discs isn’t that the two brass players – Stephen Haynes is the other besides Bynum – on The Double Trio, are spelled by two guitarists and two drummers, while guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui alone provides the additional sounds besides those exhaled by trumpeters Mazen Kerbaj and Birgit Ulher on 3:1.

Rather the reason for the marked divergence in conception and creation between the CDs is that The Double Trio takes its impetus from Free Jazz, while 3:1 is in the Free Music tradition. Furthermore while the players on The Double Trio – note the echo of Ornette Coleman’s double quartet here – are for the most part playing tune-oriented music in its broadest sense, Kerbaj, Ulher and Sehnaoui are manipulating sounds.

Bynum’s seconds are guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Thomas Fujiwara, both of whom have worked with him in other situations, including his stand-alone trio. Meanwhile Haynes, a Connecticut-based arts advocate and educator, who has worked with everyone from Bill Dixon to the Dells, is backed by seldom-heard guitarist Alan Jaffe and veteran percussionist Warren Smith.

Not that the interactive polyphony splits into trio verses trio. For instance on “mm (pf)”, the second part of “Suite Miscellaneous”, both trumpeters squeeze lip-burbling Bronx cheers from their horn as the drums rattle and the dual guitars strum and pick. Progressing in a tempo close to a drunken stagger, the horns parry interjections from the guitars that turn to descending licks while the drummers beat paradiddles and flams. Eventually the brass timbres divide, with one smoothly tattooing the melody and the other ejecting skyscraper-high notes. As the piece turns to diminuendo percussion rebounds, off-centre guitar frailing meld with downward slithering trumpet lines.

In contrast, Bynum’s “YX 6C” comes complete with a rhythmically sophisticated melody, chorded in African High-Life fashion by Halvorson. As the drums roll and rebound, the cornetist’s brassy blasts shape this serpentine construction chromatically, as it’s further decorated by Haynes’ slide-whistle-like discord. While the guitarists conclude by crunching splayed runs together, one plectrumist recaps the initial theme as one drummer continues outputting ruffs.

Even more traditional – in this Free Jazz context – is the six’s treatment of Coleman’s “Broken Shadows”. When one drummer press rolls, the other splashes cymbals, as the guitarists expose a sonic rainbow of finger picking, crossing and re-crossing one another’s lines until the sprightly melody is heard again. Then as the brass players contrapuntally spin out the theme, one guitarist sounds a distorted counter-theme. On other places on the CD, wood-block smacks are heard and one of the brass men –Haynes? – outputs a series of Miles Davis-like smears and slurs on top of booming strumming from the dual guitars.

There’s nothing that overt on 3:1, concerned as it is with textures and tones rather than linear improvisation. With no hierarchical division between the front and backline, each instrument has the same prominence, with Sehnaoui’s playing as obtuse and opaque as the trumpeters’. His looping asides and pedal point string sweeps do however provide a fundamental base on which the tongue slaps, mouthpiece oscillations and spit blows that characterize much of the brass exposition can rest. Discerning Ulher’s singular contributions from Kazen’s is nearly impossible, except for passages on “0:0” where the falsetto yelps are probably from her horn and the basso slurs from his.

Most of the session is concerned with shaping dissonance into movement, with both trumpeters auditioning the results of such extended technique as air-blowing without moving the valves, buzzing the mouthpiece against a solid object, playing quick bursts of concentrated triplets and spluttering and humming through the horn’s lead tube. For his part, the guitarist slides and scrapes along the strings below the bridge and pops the strings head on with mallet-like blows. Piezo pickups may be in use, but if they’re not, somehow Sehnaoui still manages to create oscillating buzzes equivalent to the trumpeters’ droning resonation.

Essentially spherical in construction, the six-track CD is defiant in its staccato dissonance, with no crescendos or diminuendos. Instead chiming friction, yawning echoes, thick, metallic-sounding rotations and jack-hammer like patterns are followed. Tremolo tonguing and a series of onomatopoeic and animal-like tones encompassing dog yelps, feline purrs and woodpecker patterns are more prominent than traditional brass notes.

Considering these sessions plumb the limits of trumpet expression in improvisation without remotely resembling one another, both confirm the versatility of a brass instrument duo.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Double: 1. Hebeshebewebe I 2. YX 6C 3, Broken Shadows 4. Hebeshebewebe II Suite Miscellaneous 5. Triple Duo 6. mm (pf) 7. Miscellaneous 8. Kush 9. Notes from an Autumn Diary

Personnel: Double: Stephen Haynes (trumpet and cornet); Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Alan Jaffe and Mary Halvorson (guitars); Warren Smith and Thomas Fujiwara (drums)

Track Listing: 3:1: 1. 0: 0 2. 1: 0 3. 2:0 4. half-time 5. 2:1 6. 3:1

Personnel: 3:1: Mazen Kerbaj and Birgit Ulher (trumpets) and Sharif Sehnaoui (guitar)

November 14, 2008

MAWJA

“Live One”
Chloë 008

MAWJA

Studio One

Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 07

Various Artists

Beirut-Ystad

Olof Bright Editions OBCD 16-17

Tom Chant/Sharif Sehnaoui

Cloister

Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 05

Despite the political instability and sectarian violence that continues to disrupt the country, improbably enough the nascent Lebanese Free Music movement seems to progress from strength to strength.

Not only does Beirut’s annual festival of improvised music attract major Free Music stylists from overseas, but Lebanese improvisers are starting to travel and make an impression elsewhere. This situation is reflected in this set of impressive CDs. Just as importantly, it also confirms the universality of improvisation. Reductionist and electro-acoustic, the results heard from the locals are no more stereotypical Middle Eastern than others’ improvisations reflect Continental Europe or the United States.

To move from the general to the particular, Beirut-based trumpeter and cornetist Mazen Kerbaj’s two CDs with Massachusetts-based cellist Vic Rawlings and New York state-based bassist Michael Bullock as MAWJA, were recorded at four different gigs the brassman played with the two in the United States. British saxophonist Tom Chant’s duets with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui were recorded in Paris; while Beirut-Ystad, which was recorded in an art museum and studio in Hammerhög, Sweden, features seven Lebanese improvisers collaborating in different formations with12 of their European counterpoints from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands

In common with many 21st Century improvised music sessions, the Lebanese-plus creations can be divided into acoustic and electric CDs. For example, both MAWJA discs focus as much on Rawlings’ surface electronics and Bullock’s electronic feedback as the instruments’ unvarnished timbres; whereas Cloister is all acoustic. A two-CD-set, Beirut-Ystad showcases ad-hoc new groupings on nearly every track, with the players using a combination of electronic and acoustic instruments.

When it comes to the Kerbaj/Rawlings/Bullock CDs, there’s almost no difference between how the three approach a live or a studio session. However “Live One” appears more animated, perhaps because the two performances – although only slightly lengthier than a couple on Studio One – seem to gain additional energy and new ideas from the surroundings. On the nearly-30 minute Washington D.C. performance for instance, the metallic buzz and motor-grinding never masks unique, individual textures. Expanded spectral interaction includes bubbling mouthpiece assertions, dog-like yaps and slide-whistle-like interjections from the cornetist; full frontal slaps and pats plus sul ponticello scraping from the stringed instruments; and percussive pulsations that range from ring modulator pulsing to what could be electric shaver action and marbles being rolled in irregular patterns. Inchoate and suggesting crossed wire interference and intermittent AC/DC pulsations, the backing oscillations ratchet through the undertow to expose an intermezzo of jagged, fortissimo whines, which finally subside into rough, connective timbres.

Woody belly-and-waist reverberations from the cello and bass plus flutters and puffs from Kerbaj as well as fungible, contrapuntal modulations from a variety of electronic add-ons are present on this CD’s other track as well as on all of Studio One. This isn’t surprising since both discs were literally recorded within days of one another. However the improvisations seem to be most expressive when the traditional instruments’ properties can be isolated from the envelopes of concentrated jackhammer pressure, dense band-saw-like buzzing and woozy feedback.

Thus a single clear brass note or an emphasized deep breath from the trumpet or gentle rubs or fortissimo snaps from the strings provide more of a context for the lengthening knob-twisted sputters and drones surrounding and sonically replacing these timbres as the six tracks evolve. Flanged resonations, wire-in-socket shrills and triggered, spacey wave forms pitch-slide from background to foreground , while double-tongued, brass flourishes, wood rubbing or spiccato plucks are also stripped to their spectral nodes. The resulting echoing flanges, sideband clanging and stretched tonal twitters reveal themselves as being directed by humans, making the cumulative interface that much more impressive.

In a similar fashion Beirut-Ystad helps to define and expand this electro-acoustic divide. Interestingly enough though only six of the 17 tracks feature electronics. Even the most highly electric ones such as “CH/JH/JR” and “JH/JR/PS” create a rapprochement between the two approaches. On the later piece, Per Svensson, one of the major figures in Swedish noise music, displays chiming guitarist runs and flat-picking to counteract the grinding input and output signals plus lap top extensions and flanges from Danish laptopper Jakob Riis and Lebanese electronic manipulator – and philosophy teacher – Jassem Hindi.

In contrast, on “JH/JR/PS”, in spite of the arena rock feedback, watery sputtering and twittering wave forms from Riis and Hindi, Beirut’s Charbel Haber’s guitar is only rarely masked. And that happens only when crackling circular pulsations reach a nearly painful aural threshold. Droning simultaneously the two seem to suck up most of the sonic impulses.

On the other hand, despite the robust whooshes and rondo wiggling vibrations from the laptop of Sweden’s Lise-Lotte Norelius on AS/CS/LN” and “CH/LN/MG”, the spiccato scrapes of Hammerhög resident Amit Sen’s cello are clearly heard. Intermittent trills and reductionist timbres from Paris-based Christine Sehnaoui are also plainly audible, while the characteristic yelps and growls from Sweden’s Mats Gustafsson’s baritone saxophone demonstrate how he has been able to overpower not only electronics, but not be intimidated by veteran Energy players such as saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

Combining the properties of acoustic styling and electronics, the four plectrumists on “Guitars” produce the only other track that could be termed full-out electronics. Yet here the typewriter-like clinking, triggered wave forms and motor-turning coexist with plucking and ringing standard string tuning. Berlin’s Annette Krebs and Stockholm’s David Stackenäs – a sometime Gustaffson collaborator – use table-top guitars, while Haber and Beirut’s Sharif Sehnaoui – a member of the group Rouba3i with Kerbaj and Christine Sehnaoui – strum their guitars in the usual manner.

Providing linkage not only between acoustic and electronic interface, but also between Free Jazz and Free Music plus Europe and the Middle East, is veteran percussionist Sven Åke Johansson. Swedish-born, but a long-time Berlin resident, Johansson, who played with Brötzmann and others in EuroJazz’s infancy confirms his support for young improvisers by joining Rouba3i for one improv and partnering Christine Sehnaoui in two other groups – one completed by Gustaffson and the other by Dutch crackle box inventor Michel Waisvisz, who was in a trio with the percussionist in the 1970s.

That track plus the ones with the three young improvisers provides some of the most emotionally profound sounds on the two-CD set. “Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson” finds the drummer linking the tick-tock rolls, conga-like hand beats and cymbal scrapes of Free Jazz with the near-reductionist ethos of the other three. Kerbaj contributes mouthpiece kisses and reverberating gargling; C. Sehnaoui abrasive aviary cries and irregular vibrato, while the most physical of the trio, guitarist Sehnaoui squeezes out undulating electronic flanges. Johansson adds brush swipes and drum-top reverberations.

On the other track, because Waisvisz’s primitive electronics are so lo-tech, the snaps and wiggles he produces successfully destroy any fourth wall that exists between his instrument and C. Sehnaoui’s and Johansson’s acoustic ones. A three-sided Catherine Wheel, the resulting miasma finesses altissimo screeches, hollow body tube blows, accordion-like bellows, rustles and floor scrapes and what sounds like backwards running tape flanging. Each player’s high pitches bond for the finale.

With acoustic instruments paramount, the most notable of the other tracks are those in which the minimalist fare developed by the Lebanese musicians is given a boost into expanded overtones with the harsh baritone saxophone honks and tongue slaps from Gustafson. Otherwise the Middle Eastern musicians – who also include bassist and video artist Raed Yassin –zigzag through a diminishing timbre collection of horn-pressured growling striations and choked parlando; string pulses that encompass tangling, untangling and shifting parameters; plus concussive or distracted percussive scrapes.

More representative of the cross-Continental exchange though is the meeting of Krebs’ table-top instrument and the bass clarinet of London-based, Lebanese bass clarinetist Bechir Saadé. Almost an object lesson in the potential rapprochement between east and west available, this acoustic and electronic interface evolves over 10½ minutes. During the course of the performance it’s buoyed as much by Krebs’ suddenly interjected sound samples plus intermittent on-and-off buzzes as Saadé’s unforced, tongue-stopped and split-tone reed output. Combining barking shouts, harmonica-like wheezing and linear body tube gusts, the reed output balances the scattered, triggered and crackling string pulses. Harmonized, the sound is gradually drained into silence.

Although individual pitches and tones are exposed, a similar strategy evolved about 18 months earlier on three long improvisations recorded in his Paris apartment by guitarist Sehnaoui with British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant, known for his work with drummer Eddie Prévost.

Gradually becoming comfortable with one another’s idiosyncrasies, each subsequent improv is longer than the proceeding one and fascination results from observation of the two pulling apart and knitting together pulses and tones. Sehnaoui, who spends as much time picking beneath the bridge of his acoustic guitar as near the sound hole, and who rubs and slaps his strings as often as he picks, also introduces arpeggios and jetes that could only result from using a bow. For his part Chant vacillates between watery trills, spittle-encrusted slurps and in continuously breathed phrases.

As Chant’s glottal punctuation becomes more wonky and striated – bringing the ligature and alloy of the horn into play as much as the reed – the guitarist treats his instrument as an idiophone with rattles and friction used as sound sources.

Eventually rasgueado pressure and string-hammering are emphasized by the guitarist to such an extent that it sounds as if he’s triggering electronic wave forms. Accordingly, the more-than-24½ minute final variation becomes an exercise in dissonance. Chant outputs ragged honks and windpipe narrowed breaths, while Sehnaoui becomes more percussive with slurred fingering leading to highly rhythmic agitato runs and arco-impersonating buzzing resonations. With Sehnaoui’s fingers propelling an orienteering race on the strings, the saxophonist’s irregular vibrato turns to whippoorwill-like caws echoing inside the horn’s body tube. Mixing spetrofluctuation from Chant’s horn with actions that sound as if Sehnaoui is detuning his strings as he plays, the finale includes a protracted bass string thump and dissolving irregular reed cries.

Much more successfully musically than any equivalent political meeting between Middle Eastern residents, Europeans and Americans, there’s a wealth of memorable improv to experience on these sessions.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Studio: 1 S1.1 2. S1.2 3. S 1.3 4. S1.4 5. S1.5 6. S1.6

Personnel: Studio: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Sept 05: WNUR Chicago, IL 2. Sept 05: Warehouse Next Door, Washington DC

Personnel: Live: Mazen Kerbaj (cornet and objects); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Beirut: CDA: 1. Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson 2. CS/MW/SÅJ 3. JH/JR/PS 4. Lotta Melin invites 5. AK/BS CDB: 1. Guitars 2. CS/MG/SÅJ I-II 3. DS/MG/MK/RY/SS I 4. DS/MG/MK/RY?SS II 5. BS/JR 6. AK/CS/MK I 7. AK/CS/MK II 8. AS/CS/LN 9. CH/LN/MG 10. CS/MG/MK/RY 11. CH/MG 12. CH/JH/JR

Personnel: Beirut: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet and electronics); Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet and flute); Christine Sehnaoui (alto saxophone); Mats Gustafsson (tenor, slide and baritone saxophones); Sharif Sehnaoui and/or Charbel Haber and/or Annette Krebs and/or David Stackenäs and/or Per Svensson (guitar); Amit Sen (cello); Raed Yassin and/or Joel Grip (bass); Sven Åke Johansson (percussion, voice); Michael Waisvisz (crackle box); Lise-Lotte Norelius (laptop); Jessem Hindi or Hanna Hartman (electronics, miscellaneous little instruments); Jakob Riis (laptop) and Lotta Melin (conduction/dance)

Track Listing: Cloister: 1.Us Three 2. Four Sputnik 3. What About Seven

Personnel: Cloister: Tom Chant (soprano saxophone) and Sharif Sehnaoui (acoustic guitar)

February 19, 2008

MAWJA

Studio One
Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 07

MAWJA

“Live One”

Chloë 008

Various Artists

Beirut-Ystad

Olof Bright Editions OBCD 16-17

Tom Chant/Sharif Sehnaoui

Cloister

Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 05

Despite the political instability and sectarian violence that continues to disrupt the country, improbably enough the nascent Lebanese Free Music movement seems to progress from strength to strength.

Not only does Beirut’s annual festival of improvised music attract major Free Music stylists from overseas, but Lebanese improvisers are starting to travel and make an impression elsewhere. This situation is reflected in this set of impressive CDs. Just as importantly, it also confirms the universality of improvisation. Reductionist and electro-acoustic, the results heard from the locals are no more stereotypical Middle Eastern than others’ improvisations reflect Continental Europe or the United States.

To move from the general to the particular, Beirut-based trumpeter and cornetist Mazen Kerbaj’s two CDs with Massachusetts-based cellist Vic Rawlings and New York state-based bassist Michael Bullock as MAWJA, were recorded at four different gigs the brassman played with the two in the United States. British saxophonist Tom Chant’s duets with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui were recorded in Paris; while Beirut-Ystad, which was recorded in an art museum and studio in Hammerhög, Sweden, features seven Lebanese improvisers collaborating in different formations with12 of their European counterpoints from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands

In common with many 21st Century improvised music sessions, the Lebanese-plus creations can be divided into acoustic and electric CDs. For example, both MAWJA discs focus as much on Rawlings’ surface electronics and Bullock’s electronic feedback as the instruments’ unvarnished timbres; whereas Cloister is all acoustic. A two-CD-set, Beirut-Ystad showcases ad-hoc new groupings on nearly every track, with the players using a combination of electronic and acoustic instruments.

When it comes to the Kerbaj/Rawlings/Bullock CDs, there’s almost no difference between how the three approach a live or a studio session. However “Live One” appears more animated, perhaps because the two performances – although only slightly lengthier than a couple on Studio One – seem to gain additional energy and new ideas from the surroundings. On the nearly-30 minute Washington D.C. performance for instance, the metallic buzz and motor-grinding never masks unique, individual textures. Expanded spectral interaction includes bubbling mouthpiece assertions, dog-like yaps and slide-whistle-like interjections from the cornetist; full frontal slaps and pats plus sul ponticello scraping from the stringed instruments; and percussive pulsations that range from ring modulator pulsing to what could be electric shaver action and marbles being rolled in irregular patterns. Inchoate and suggesting crossed wire interference and intermittent AC/DC pulsations, the backing oscillations ratchet through the undertow to expose an intermezzo of jagged, fortissimo whines, which finally subside into rough, connective timbres.

Woody belly-and-waist reverberations from the cello and bass plus flutters and puffs from Kerbaj as well as fungible, contrapuntal modulations from a variety of electronic add-ons are present on this CD’s other track as well as on all of Studio One. This isn’t surprising since both discs were literally recorded within days of one another. However the improvisations seem to be most expressive when the traditional instruments’ properties can be isolated from the envelopes of concentrated jackhammer pressure, dense band-saw-like buzzing and woozy feedback.

Thus a single clear brass note or an emphasized deep breath from the trumpet or gentle rubs or fortissimo snaps from the strings provide more of a context for the lengthening knob-twisted sputters and drones surrounding and sonically replacing these timbres as the six tracks evolve. Flanged resonations, wire-in-socket shrills and triggered, spacey wave forms pitch-slide from background to foreground , while double-tongued, brass flourishes, wood rubbing or spiccato plucks are also stripped to their spectral nodes. The resulting echoing flanges, sideband clanging and stretched tonal twitters reveal themselves as being directed by humans, making the cumulative interface that much more impressive.

In a similar fashion Beirut-Ystad helps to define and expand this electro-acoustic divide. Interestingly enough though only six of the 17 tracks feature electronics. Even the most highly electric ones such as “CH/JH/JR” and “JH/JR/PS” create a rapprochement between the two approaches. On the later piece, Per Svensson, one of the major figures in Swedish noise music, displays chiming guitarist runs and flat-picking to counteract the grinding input and output signals plus lap top extensions and flanges from Danish laptopper Jakob Riis and Lebanese electronic manipulator – and philosophy teacher – Jassem Hindi.

In contrast, on “JH/JR/PS”, in spite of the arena rock feedback, watery sputtering and twittering wave forms from Riis and Hindi, Beirut’s Charbel Haber’s guitar is only rarely masked. And that happens only when crackling circular pulsations reach a nearly painful aural threshold. Droning simultaneously the two seem to suck up most of the sonic impulses.

On the other hand, despite the robust whooshes and rondo wiggling vibrations from the laptop of Sweden’s Lise-Lotte Norelius on AS/CS/LN” and “CH/LN/MG”, the spiccato scrapes of Hammerhög resident Amit Sen’s cello are clearly heard. Intermittent trills and reductionist timbres from Paris-based Christine Sehnaoui are also plainly audible, while the characteristic yelps and growls from Sweden’s Mats Gustafsson’s baritone saxophone demonstrate how he has been able to overpower not only electronics, but not be intimidated by veteran Energy players such as saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

Combining the properties of acoustic styling and electronics, the four plectrumists on “Guitars” produce the only other track that could be termed full-out electronics. Yet here the typewriter-like clinking, triggered wave forms and motor-turning coexist with plucking and ringing standard string tuning. Berlin’s Annette Krebs and Stockholm’s David Stackenäs – a sometime Gustaffson collaborator – use table-top guitars, while Haber and Beirut’s Sharif Sehnaoui – a member of the group Rouba3i with Kerbaj and Christine Sehnaoui – strum their guitars in the usual manner.

Providing linkage not only between acoustic and electronic interface, but also between Free Jazz and Free Music plus Europe and the Middle East, is veteran percussionist Sven Åke Johansson. Swedish-born, but a long-time Berlin resident, Johansson, who played with Brötzmann and others in EuroJazz’s infancy confirms his support for young improvisers by joining Rouba3i for one improv and partnering Christine Sehnaoui in two other groups – one completed by Gustaffson and the other by Dutch crackle box inventor Michel Waisvisz, who was in a trio with the percussionist in the 1970s.

That track plus the ones with the three young improvisers provides some of the most emotionally profound sounds on the two-CD set. “Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson” finds the drummer linking the tick-tock rolls, conga-like hand beats and cymbal scrapes of Free Jazz with the near-reductionist ethos of the other three. Kerbaj contributes mouthpiece kisses and reverberating gargling; C. Sehnaoui abrasive aviary cries and irregular vibrato, while the most physical of the trio, guitarist Sehnaoui squeezes out undulating electronic flanges. Johansson adds brush swipes and drum-top reverberations.

On the other track, because Waisvisz’s primitive electronics are so lo-tech, the snaps and wiggles he produces successfully destroy any fourth wall that exists between his instrument and C. Sehnaoui’s and Johansson’s acoustic ones. A three-sided Catherine Wheel, the resulting miasma finesses altissimo screeches, hollow body tube blows, accordion-like bellows, rustles and floor scrapes and what sounds like backwards running tape flanging. Each player’s high pitches bond for the finale.

With acoustic instruments paramount, the most notable of the other tracks are those in which the minimalist fare developed by the Lebanese musicians is given a boost into expanded overtones with the harsh baritone saxophone honks and tongue slaps from Gustafson. Otherwise the Middle Eastern musicians – who also include bassist and video artist Raed Yassin –zigzag through a diminishing timbre collection of horn-pressured growling striations and choked parlando; string pulses that encompass tangling, untangling and shifting parameters; plus concussive or distracted percussive scrapes.

More representative of the cross-Continental exchange though is the meeting of Krebs’ table-top instrument and the bass clarinet of London-based, Lebanese bass clarinetist Bechir Saadé. Almost an object lesson in the potential rapprochement between east and west available, this acoustic and electronic interface evolves over 10½ minutes. During the course of the performance it’s buoyed as much by Krebs’ suddenly interjected sound samples plus intermittent on-and-off buzzes as Saadé’s unforced, tongue-stopped and split-tone reed output. Combining barking shouts, harmonica-like wheezing and linear body tube gusts, the reed output balances the scattered, triggered and crackling string pulses. Harmonized, the sound is gradually drained into silence.

Although individual pitches and tones are exposed, a similar strategy evolved about 18 months earlier on three long improvisations recorded in his Paris apartment by guitarist Sehnaoui with British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant, known for his work with drummer Eddie Prévost.

Gradually becoming comfortable with one another’s idiosyncrasies, each subsequent improv is longer than the proceeding one and fascination results from observation of the two pulling apart and knitting together pulses and tones. Sehnaoui, who spends as much time picking beneath the bridge of his acoustic guitar as near the sound hole, and who rubs and slaps his strings as often as he picks, also introduces arpeggios and jetes that could only result from using a bow. For his part Chant vacillates between watery trills, spittle-encrusted slurps and in continuously breathed phrases.

As Chant’s glottal punctuation becomes more wonky and striated – bringing the ligature and alloy of the horn into play as much as the reed – the guitarist treats his instrument as an idiophone with rattles and friction used as sound sources.

Eventually rasgueado pressure and string-hammering are emphasized by the guitarist to such an extent that it sounds as if he’s triggering electronic wave forms. Accordingly, the more-than-24½ minute final variation becomes an exercise in dissonance. Chant outputs ragged honks and windpipe narrowed breaths, while Sehnaoui becomes more percussive with slurred fingering leading to highly rhythmic agitato runs and arco-impersonating buzzing resonations. With Sehnaoui’s fingers propelling an orienteering race on the strings, the saxophonist’s irregular vibrato turns to whippoorwill-like caws echoing inside the horn’s body tube. Mixing spetrofluctuation from Chant’s horn with actions that sound as if Sehnaoui is detuning his strings as he plays, the finale includes a protracted bass string thump and dissolving irregular reed cries.

Much more successfully musically than any equivalent political meeting between Middle Eastern residents, Europeans and Americans, there’s a wealth of memorable improv to experience on these sessions.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Studio: 1 S1.1 2. S1.2 3. S 1.3 4. S1.4 5. S1.5 6. S1.6

Personnel: Studio: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Sept 05: WNUR Chicago, IL 2. Sept 05: Warehouse Next Door, Washington DC

Personnel: Live: Mazen Kerbaj (cornet and objects); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Beirut: CDA: 1. Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson 2. CS/MW/SÅJ 3. JH/JR/PS 4. Lotta Melin invites 5. AK/BS CDB: 1. Guitars 2. CS/MG/SÅJ I-II 3. DS/MG/MK/RY/SS I 4. DS/MG/MK/RY?SS II 5. BS/JR 6. AK/CS/MK I 7. AK/CS/MK II 8. AS/CS/LN 9. CH/LN/MG 10. CS/MG/MK/RY 11. CH/MG 12. CH/JH/JR

Personnel: Beirut: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet and electronics); Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet and flute); Christine Sehnaoui (alto saxophone); Mats Gustafsson (tenor, slide and baritone saxophones); Sharif Sehnaoui and/or Charbel Haber and/or Annette Krebs and/or David Stackenäs and/or Per Svensson (guitar); Amit Sen (cello); Raed Yassin and/or Joel Grip (bass); Sven Åke Johansson (percussion, voice); Michael Waisvisz (crackle box); Lise-Lotte Norelius (laptop); Jessem Hindi or Hanna Hartman (electronics, miscellaneous little instruments); Jakob Riis (laptop) and Lotta Melin (conduction/dance)

Track Listing: Cloister: 1.Us Three 2. Four Sputnik 3. What About Seven

Personnel: Cloister: Tom Chant (soprano saxophone) and Sharif Sehnaoui (acoustic guitar)

February 19, 2008

Various Artists

Beirut-Ystad
Olof Bright Editions OBCD 16-17

MAWJA

Studio One

Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 07

MAWJA

“Live One”

Chloë 008

Tom Chant/Sharif Sehnaoui

Cloister

Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 05

Despite the political instability and sectarian violence that continues to disrupt the country, improbably enough the nascent Lebanese Free Music movement seems to progress from strength to strength.

Not only does Beirut’s annual festival of improvised music attract major Free Music stylists from overseas, but Lebanese improvisers are starting to travel and make an impression elsewhere. This situation is reflected in this set of impressive CDs. Just as importantly, it also confirms the universality of improvisation. Reductionist and electro-acoustic, the results heard from the locals are no more stereotypical Middle Eastern than others’ improvisations reflect Continental Europe or the United States.

To move from the general to the particular, Beirut-based trumpeter and cornetist Mazen Kerbaj’s two CDs with Massachusetts-based cellist Vic Rawlings and New York state-based bassist Michael Bullock as MAWJA, were recorded at four different gigs the brassman played with the two in the United States. British saxophonist Tom Chant’s duets with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui were recorded in Paris; while Beirut-Ystad, which was recorded in an art museum and studio in Hammerhög, Sweden, features seven Lebanese improvisers collaborating in different formations with12 of their European counterpoints from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands

In common with many 21st Century improvised music sessions, the Lebanese-plus creations can be divided into acoustic and electric CDs. For example, both MAWJA discs focus as much on Rawlings’ surface electronics and Bullock’s electronic feedback as the instruments’ unvarnished timbres; whereas Cloister is all acoustic. A two-CD-set, Beirut-Ystad showcases ad-hoc new groupings on nearly every track, with the players using a combination of electronic and acoustic instruments.

When it comes to the Kerbaj/Rawlings/Bullock CDs, there’s almost no difference between how the three approach a live or a studio session. However “Live One” appears more animated, perhaps because the two performances – although only slightly lengthier than a couple on Studio One – seem to gain additional energy and new ideas from the surroundings. On the nearly-30 minute Washington D.C. performance for instance, the metallic buzz and motor-grinding never masks unique, individual textures. Expanded spectral interaction includes bubbling mouthpiece assertions, dog-like yaps and slide-whistle-like interjections from the cornetist; full frontal slaps and pats plus sul ponticello scraping from the stringed instruments; and percussive pulsations that range from ring modulator pulsing to what could be electric shaver action and marbles being rolled in irregular patterns. Inchoate and suggesting crossed wire interference and intermittent AC/DC pulsations, the backing oscillations ratchet through the undertow to expose an intermezzo of jagged, fortissimo whines, which finally subside into rough, connective timbres.

Woody belly-and-waist reverberations from the cello and bass plus flutters and puffs from Kerbaj as well as fungible, contrapuntal modulations from a variety of electronic add-ons are present on this CD’s other track as well as on all of Studio One. This isn’t surprising since both discs were literally recorded within days of one another. However the improvisations seem to be most expressive when the traditional instruments’ properties can be isolated from the envelopes of concentrated jackhammer pressure, dense band-saw-like buzzing and woozy feedback.

Thus a single clear brass note or an emphasized deep breath from the trumpet or gentle rubs or fortissimo snaps from the strings provide more of a context for the lengthening knob-twisted sputters and drones surrounding and sonically replacing these timbres as the six tracks evolve. Flanged resonations, wire-in-socket shrills and triggered, spacey wave forms pitch-slide from background to foreground , while double-tongued, brass flourishes, wood rubbing or spiccato plucks are also stripped to their spectral nodes. The resulting echoing flanges, sideband clanging and stretched tonal twitters reveal themselves as being directed by humans, making the cumulative interface that much more impressive.

In a similar fashion Beirut-Ystad helps to define and expand this electro-acoustic divide. Interestingly enough though only six of the 17 tracks feature electronics. Even the most highly electric ones such as “CH/JH/JR” and “JH/JR/PS” create a rapprochement between the two approaches. On the later piece, Per Svensson, one of the major figures in Swedish noise music, displays chiming guitarist runs and flat-picking to counteract the grinding input and output signals plus lap top extensions and flanges from Danish laptopper Jakob Riis and Lebanese electronic manipulator – and philosophy teacher – Jassem Hindi.

In contrast, on “JH/JR/PS”, in spite of the arena rock feedback, watery sputtering and twittering wave forms from Riis and Hindi, Beirut’s Charbel Haber’s guitar is only rarely masked. And that happens only when crackling circular pulsations reach a nearly painful aural threshold. Droning simultaneously the two seem to suck up most of the sonic impulses.

On the other hand, despite the robust whooshes and rondo wiggling vibrations from the laptop of Sweden’s Lise-Lotte Norelius on AS/CS/LN” and “CH/LN/MG”, the spiccato scrapes of Hammerhög resident Amit Sen’s cello are clearly heard. Intermittent trills and reductionist timbres from Paris-based Christine Sehnaoui are also plainly audible, while the characteristic yelps and growls from Sweden’s Mats Gustafsson’s baritone saxophone demonstrate how he has been able to overpower not only electronics, but not be intimidated by veteran Energy players such as saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

Combining the properties of acoustic styling and electronics, the four plectrumists on “Guitars” produce the only other track that could be termed full-out electronics. Yet here the typewriter-like clinking, triggered wave forms and motor-turning coexist with plucking and ringing standard string tuning. Berlin’s Annette Krebs and Stockholm’s David Stackenäs – a sometime Gustaffson collaborator – use table-top guitars, while Haber and Beirut’s Sharif Sehnaoui – a member of the group Rouba3i with Kerbaj and Christine Sehnaoui – strum their guitars in the usual manner.

Providing linkage not only between acoustic and electronic interface, but also between Free Jazz and Free Music plus Europe and the Middle East, is veteran percussionist Sven Åke Johansson. Swedish-born, but a long-time Berlin resident, Johansson, who played with Brötzmann and others in EuroJazz’s infancy confirms his support for young improvisers by joining Rouba3i for one improv and partnering Christine Sehnaoui in two other groups – one completed by Gustaffson and the other by Dutch crackle box inventor Michel Waisvisz, who was in a trio with the percussionist in the 1970s.

That track plus the ones with the three young improvisers provides some of the most emotionally profound sounds on the two-CD set. “Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson” finds the drummer linking the tick-tock rolls, conga-like hand beats and cymbal scrapes of Free Jazz with the near-reductionist ethos of the other three. Kerbaj contributes mouthpiece kisses and reverberating gargling; C. Sehnaoui abrasive aviary cries and irregular vibrato, while the most physical of the trio, guitarist Sehnaoui squeezes out undulating electronic flanges. Johansson adds brush swipes and drum-top reverberations.

On the other track, because Waisvisz’s primitive electronics are so lo-tech, the snaps and wiggles he produces successfully destroy any fourth wall that exists between his instrument and C. Sehnaoui’s and Johansson’s acoustic ones. A three-sided Catherine Wheel, the resulting miasma finesses altissimo screeches, hollow body tube blows, accordion-like bellows, rustles and floor scrapes and what sounds like backwards running tape flanging. Each player’s high pitches bond for the finale.

With acoustic instruments paramount, the most notable of the other tracks are those in which the minimalist fare developed by the Lebanese musicians is given a boost into expanded overtones with the harsh baritone saxophone honks and tongue slaps from Gustafson. Otherwise the Middle Eastern musicians – who also include bassist and video artist Raed Yassin –zigzag through a diminishing timbre collection of horn-pressured growling striations and choked parlando; string pulses that encompass tangling, untangling and shifting parameters; plus concussive or distracted percussive scrapes.

More representative of the cross-Continental exchange though is the meeting of Krebs’ table-top instrument and the bass clarinet of London-based, Lebanese bass clarinetist Bechir Saadé. Almost an object lesson in the potential rapprochement between east and west available, this acoustic and electronic interface evolves over 10½ minutes. During the course of the performance it’s buoyed as much by Krebs’ suddenly interjected sound samples plus intermittent on-and-off buzzes as Saadé’s unforced, tongue-stopped and split-tone reed output. Combining barking shouts, harmonica-like wheezing and linear body tube gusts, the reed output balances the scattered, triggered and crackling string pulses. Harmonized, the sound is gradually drained into silence.

Although individual pitches and tones are exposed, a similar strategy evolved about 18 months earlier on three long improvisations recorded in his Paris apartment by guitarist Sehnaoui with British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant, known for his work with drummer Eddie Prévost.

Gradually becoming comfortable with one another’s idiosyncrasies, each subsequent improv is longer than the proceeding one and fascination results from observation of the two pulling apart and knitting together pulses and tones. Sehnaoui, who spends as much time picking beneath the bridge of his acoustic guitar as near the sound hole, and who rubs and slaps his strings as often as he picks, also introduces arpeggios and jetes that could only result from using a bow. For his part Chant vacillates between watery trills, spittle-encrusted slurps and in continuously breathed phrases.

As Chant’s glottal punctuation becomes more wonky and striated – bringing the ligature and alloy of the horn into play as much as the reed – the guitarist treats his instrument as an idiophone with rattles and friction used as sound sources.

Eventually rasgueado pressure and string-hammering are emphasized by the guitarist to such an extent that it sounds as if he’s triggering electronic wave forms. Accordingly, the more-than-24½ minute final variation becomes an exercise in dissonance. Chant outputs ragged honks and windpipe narrowed breaths, while Sehnaoui becomes more percussive with slurred fingering leading to highly rhythmic agitato runs and arco-impersonating buzzing resonations. With Sehnaoui’s fingers propelling an orienteering race on the strings, the saxophonist’s irregular vibrato turns to whippoorwill-like caws echoing inside the horn’s body tube. Mixing spetrofluctuation from Chant’s horn with actions that sound as if Sehnaoui is detuning his strings as he plays, the finale includes a protracted bass string thump and dissolving irregular reed cries.

Much more successfully musically than any equivalent political meeting between Middle Eastern residents, Europeans and Americans, there’s a wealth of memorable improv to experience on these sessions.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Studio: 1 S1.1 2. S1.2 3. S 1.3 4. S1.4 5. S1.5 6. S1.6

Personnel: Studio: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Sept 05: WNUR Chicago, IL 2. Sept 05: Warehouse Next Door, Washington DC

Personnel: Live: Mazen Kerbaj (cornet and objects); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Beirut: CDA: 1. Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson 2. CS/MW/SÅJ 3. JH/JR/PS 4. Lotta Melin invites 5. AK/BS CDB: 1. Guitars 2. CS/MG/SÅJ I-II 3. DS/MG/MK/RY/SS I 4. DS/MG/MK/RY?SS II 5. BS/JR 6. AK/CS/MK I 7. AK/CS/MK II 8. AS/CS/LN 9. CH/LN/MG 10. CS/MG/MK/RY 11. CH/MG 12. CH/JH/JR

Personnel: Beirut: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet and electronics); Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet and flute); Christine Sehnaoui (alto saxophone); Mats Gustafsson (tenor, slide and baritone saxophones); Sharif Sehnaoui and/or Charbel Haber and/or Annette Krebs and/or David Stackenäs and/or Per Svensson (guitar); Amit Sen (cello); Raed Yassin and/or Joel Grip (bass); Sven Åke Johansson (percussion, voice); Michael Waisvisz (crackle box); Lise-Lotte Norelius (laptop); Jessem Hindi or Hanna Hartman (electronics, miscellaneous little instruments); Jakob Riis (laptop) and Lotta Melin (conduction/dance)

Track Listing: Cloister: 1.Us Three 2. Four Sputnik 3. What About Seven

Personnel: Cloister: Tom Chant (soprano saxophone) and Sharif Sehnaoui (acoustic guitar)

February 19, 2008

Tom Chant/Sharif Sehnaoui

Cloister
Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 05

MAWJA

Studio One

Al Maslakh Recordings MSLKH 07

MAWJA

“Live One”

Chloë 008

Various Artists

Beirut-Ystad

Olof Bright Editions OBCD 16-17

Despite the political instability and sectarian violence that continues to disrupt the country, improbably enough the nascent Lebanese Free Music movement seems to progress from strength to strength.

Not only does Beirut’s annual festival of improvised music attract major Free Music stylists from overseas, but Lebanese improvisers are starting to travel and make an impression elsewhere. This situation is reflected in this set of impressive CDs. Just as importantly, it also confirms the universality of improvisation. Reductionist and electro-acoustic, the results heard from the locals are no more stereotypical Middle Eastern than others’ improvisations reflect Continental Europe or the United States.

To move from the general to the particular, Beirut-based trumpeter and cornetist Mazen Kerbaj’s two CDs with Massachusetts-based cellist Vic Rawlings and New York state-based bassist Michael Bullock as MAWJA, were recorded at four different gigs the brassman played with the two in the United States. British saxophonist Tom Chant’s duets with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui were recorded in Paris; while Beirut-Ystad, which was recorded in an art museum and studio in Hammerhög, Sweden, features seven Lebanese improvisers collaborating in different formations with12 of their European counterpoints from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands

In common with many 21st Century improvised music sessions, the Lebanese-plus creations can be divided into acoustic and electric CDs. For example, both MAWJA discs focus as much on Rawlings’ surface electronics and Bullock’s electronic feedback as the instruments’ unvarnished timbres; whereas Cloister is all acoustic. A two-CD-set, Beirut-Ystad showcases ad-hoc new groupings on nearly every track, with the players using a combination of electronic and acoustic instruments.

When it comes to the Kerbaj/Rawlings/Bullock CDs, there’s almost no difference between how the three approach a live or a studio session. However “Live One” appears more animated, perhaps because the two performances – although only slightly lengthier than a couple on Studio One – seem to gain additional energy and new ideas from the surroundings. On the nearly-30 minute Washington D.C. performance for instance, the metallic buzz and motor-grinding never masks unique, individual textures. Expanded spectral interaction includes bubbling mouthpiece assertions, dog-like yaps and slide-whistle-like interjections from the cornetist; full frontal slaps and pats plus sul ponticello scraping from the stringed instruments; and percussive pulsations that range from ring modulator pulsing to what could be electric shaver action and marbles being rolled in irregular patterns. Inchoate and suggesting crossed wire interference and intermittent AC/DC pulsations, the backing oscillations ratchet through the undertow to expose an intermezzo of jagged, fortissimo whines, which finally subside into rough, connective timbres.

Woody belly-and-waist reverberations from the cello and bass plus flutters and puffs from Kerbaj as well as fungible, contrapuntal modulations from a variety of electronic add-ons are present on this CD’s other track as well as on all of Studio One. This isn’t surprising since both discs were literally recorded within days of one another. However the improvisations seem to be most expressive when the traditional instruments’ properties can be isolated from the envelopes of concentrated jackhammer pressure, dense band-saw-like buzzing and woozy feedback.

Thus a single clear brass note or an emphasized deep breath from the trumpet or gentle rubs or fortissimo snaps from the strings provide more of a context for the lengthening knob-twisted sputters and drones surrounding and sonically replacing these timbres as the six tracks evolve. Flanged resonations, wire-in-socket shrills and triggered, spacey wave forms pitch-slide from background to foreground , while double-tongued, brass flourishes, wood rubbing or spiccato plucks are also stripped to their spectral nodes. The resulting echoing flanges, sideband clanging and stretched tonal twitters reveal themselves as being directed by humans, making the cumulative interface that much more impressive.

In a similar fashion Beirut-Ystad helps to define and expand this electro-acoustic divide. Interestingly enough though only six of the 17 tracks feature electronics. Even the most highly electric ones such as “CH/JH/JR” and “JH/JR/PS” create a rapprochement between the two approaches. On the later piece, Per Svensson, one of the major figures in Swedish noise music, displays chiming guitarist runs and flat-picking to counteract the grinding input and output signals plus lap top extensions and flanges from Danish laptopper Jakob Riis and Lebanese electronic manipulator – and philosophy teacher – Jassem Hindi.

In contrast, on “JH/JR/PS”, in spite of the arena rock feedback, watery sputtering and twittering wave forms from Riis and Hindi, Beirut’s Charbel Haber’s guitar is only rarely masked. And that happens only when crackling circular pulsations reach a nearly painful aural threshold. Droning simultaneously the two seem to suck up most of the sonic impulses.

On the other hand, despite the robust whooshes and rondo wiggling vibrations from the laptop of Sweden’s Lise-Lotte Norelius on AS/CS/LN” and “CH/LN/MG”, the spiccato scrapes of Hammerhög resident Amit Sen’s cello are clearly heard. Intermittent trills and reductionist timbres from Paris-based Christine Sehnaoui are also plainly audible, while the characteristic yelps and growls from Sweden’s Mats Gustafsson’s baritone saxophone demonstrate how he has been able to overpower not only electronics, but not be intimidated by veteran Energy players such as saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

Combining the properties of acoustic styling and electronics, the four plectrumists on “Guitars” produce the only other track that could be termed full-out electronics. Yet here the typewriter-like clinking, triggered wave forms and motor-turning coexist with plucking and ringing standard string tuning. Berlin’s Annette Krebs and Stockholm’s David Stackenäs – a sometime Gustaffson collaborator – use table-top guitars, while Haber and Beirut’s Sharif Sehnaoui – a member of the group Rouba3i with Kerbaj and Christine Sehnaoui – strum their guitars in the usual manner.

Providing linkage not only between acoustic and electronic interface, but also between Free Jazz and Free Music plus Europe and the Middle East, is veteran percussionist Sven Åke Johansson. Swedish-born, but a long-time Berlin resident, Johansson, who played with Brötzmann and others in EuroJazz’s infancy confirms his support for young improvisers by joining Rouba3i for one improv and partnering Christine Sehnaoui in two other groups – one completed by Gustaffson and the other by Dutch crackle box inventor Michel Waisvisz, who was in a trio with the percussionist in the 1970s.

That track plus the ones with the three young improvisers provides some of the most emotionally profound sounds on the two-CD set. “Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson” finds the drummer linking the tick-tock rolls, conga-like hand beats and cymbal scrapes of Free Jazz with the near-reductionist ethos of the other three. Kerbaj contributes mouthpiece kisses and reverberating gargling; C. Sehnaoui abrasive aviary cries and irregular vibrato, while the most physical of the trio, guitarist Sehnaoui squeezes out undulating electronic flanges. Johansson adds brush swipes and drum-top reverberations.

On the other track, because Waisvisz’s primitive electronics are so lo-tech, the snaps and wiggles he produces successfully destroy any fourth wall that exists between his instrument and C. Sehnaoui’s and Johansson’s acoustic ones. A three-sided Catherine Wheel, the resulting miasma finesses altissimo screeches, hollow body tube blows, accordion-like bellows, rustles and floor scrapes and what sounds like backwards running tape flanging. Each player’s high pitches bond for the finale.

With acoustic instruments paramount, the most notable of the other tracks are those in which the minimalist fare developed by the Lebanese musicians is given a boost into expanded overtones with the harsh baritone saxophone honks and tongue slaps from Gustafson. Otherwise the Middle Eastern musicians – who also include bassist and video artist Raed Yassin –zigzag through a diminishing timbre collection of horn-pressured growling striations and choked parlando; string pulses that encompass tangling, untangling and shifting parameters; plus concussive or distracted percussive scrapes.

More representative of the cross-Continental exchange though is the meeting of Krebs’ table-top instrument and the bass clarinet of London-based, Lebanese bass clarinetist Bechir Saadé. Almost an object lesson in the potential rapprochement between east and west available, this acoustic and electronic interface evolves over 10½ minutes. During the course of the performance it’s buoyed as much by Krebs’ suddenly interjected sound samples plus intermittent on-and-off buzzes as Saadé’s unforced, tongue-stopped and split-tone reed output. Combining barking shouts, harmonica-like wheezing and linear body tube gusts, the reed output balances the scattered, triggered and crackling string pulses. Harmonized, the sound is gradually drained into silence.

Although individual pitches and tones are exposed, a similar strategy evolved about 18 months earlier on three long improvisations recorded in his Paris apartment by guitarist Sehnaoui with British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant, known for his work with drummer Eddie Prévost.

Gradually becoming comfortable with one another’s idiosyncrasies, each subsequent improv is longer than the proceeding one and fascination results from observation of the two pulling apart and knitting together pulses and tones. Sehnaoui, who spends as much time picking beneath the bridge of his acoustic guitar as near the sound hole, and who rubs and slaps his strings as often as he picks, also introduces arpeggios and jetes that could only result from using a bow. For his part Chant vacillates between watery trills, spittle-encrusted slurps and in continuously breathed phrases.

As Chant’s glottal punctuation becomes more wonky and striated – bringing the ligature and alloy of the horn into play as much as the reed – the guitarist treats his instrument as an idiophone with rattles and friction used as sound sources.

Eventually rasgueado pressure and string-hammering are emphasized by the guitarist to such an extent that it sounds as if he’s triggering electronic wave forms. Accordingly, the more-than-24½ minute final variation becomes an exercise in dissonance. Chant outputs ragged honks and windpipe narrowed breaths, while Sehnaoui becomes more percussive with slurred fingering leading to highly rhythmic agitato runs and arco-impersonating buzzing resonations. With Sehnaoui’s fingers propelling an orienteering race on the strings, the saxophonist’s irregular vibrato turns to whippoorwill-like caws echoing inside the horn’s body tube. Mixing spetrofluctuation from Chant’s horn with actions that sound as if Sehnaoui is detuning his strings as he plays, the finale includes a protracted bass string thump and dissolving irregular reed cries.

Much more successfully musically than any equivalent political meeting between Middle Eastern residents, Europeans and Americans, there’s a wealth of memorable improv to experience on these sessions.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Studio: 1 S1.1 2. S1.2 3. S 1.3 4. S1.4 5. S1.5 6. S1.6

Personnel: Studio: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Sept 05: WNUR Chicago, IL 2. Sept 05: Warehouse Next Door, Washington DC

Personnel: Live: Mazen Kerbaj (cornet and objects); Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics) and Michael Bullock (bass and feedback)

Track Listing: Beirut: CDA: 1. Roubait3i+Sven Åke Johansson 2. CS/MW/SÅJ 3. JH/JR/PS 4. Lotta Melin invites 5. AK/BS CDB: 1. Guitars 2. CS/MG/SÅJ I-II 3. DS/MG/MK/RY/SS I 4. DS/MG/MK/RY?SS II 5. BS/JR 6. AK/CS/MK I 7. AK/CS/MK II 8. AS/CS/LN 9. CH/LN/MG 10. CS/MG/MK/RY 11. CH/MG 12. CH/JH/JR

Personnel: Beirut: Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet and electronics); Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet and flute); Christine Sehnaoui (alto saxophone); Mats Gustafsson (tenor, slide and baritone saxophones); Sharif Sehnaoui and/or Charbel Haber and/or Annette Krebs and/or David Stackenäs and/or Per Svensson (guitar); Amit Sen (cello); Raed Yassin and/or Joel Grip (bass); Sven Åke Johansson (percussion, voice); Michael Waisvisz (crackle box); Lise-Lotte Norelius (laptop); Jessem Hindi or Hanna Hartman (electronics, miscellaneous little instruments); Jakob Riis (laptop) and Lotta Melin (conduction/dance)

Track Listing: Cloister: 1.Us Three 2. Four Sputnik 3. What About Seven

Personnel: Cloister: Tom Chant (soprano saxophone) and Sharif Sehnaoui (acoustic guitar)

February 19, 2008

Michael Zerang and Others

Cedarhead
Al Maslakh 06

Participant two years running in Irtijal, Beirut’s improvised music festival (see CODA 323), Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang recorded these duos with seven Lebanese players during his second visit. The resulting CD is not only a fascinating document of a little-heard musical scene, but also proof that provocative sounds can arise in an isolated, war-torn country.

Product of one of the Middle East’s most sophisticated cultures, the Beirut improvisers make their statements using everything from guitar, trumpet and saxophone to futuristic electronics to the traditional wind instrument, the nay. Zerang, whose arsenal ranges from the standard drum kit to miscellaneous percussion, includes in it the darbuka or North African hourglass-shaped drum used to accompany belly dancers, to make a memorable connection with musicians..

Trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, whose approach involves rolling and bubbling tongue bubbles, grace note buffers and capillary brays, generates a measured response from Zerang, who uses abrasive drum top pitter patter press rolls and cymbal rasps. Matched with the fading in-and-out electronic flutters and tangled radio signals from Raed Yassin, the drummer offloads his darbuka expertise. With Yassin flanging his raw material so that portions of undulating Arabic chanting and political discourse are stretched and splintered to create whooshing, non-verbal sounds, Zerang’s conga-like strokes give the presentation a rhythmic bottom.

These blunt, thick but multiple percussion resonation also help move the airy, pinched timbres of Bechir Saadé’s nay out of the realm of snake-charming. Propelling tensile percussion strokes so that the resulting rigidity is released through multiphonics, the uneven altissimo pitch of Saadé’s wooden cylinder gets 21st Century resonance.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 336

December 4, 2007

Rouba3i5

Rouba3i5
Al Maslakh

Mazen Kerbaj and Franz Hautzinger
Abu Tarek
Creative Sources

Franz Hautzinger
Franz Hautzinger's Oriental Space
Artonal

By Ken Waxman
September 18, 2005

Unbeknownst to most, over the past few years Lebanese players have quietly put together the only improvised music scene in the Middle East outside of Israel. Known as the most sophisticated of Arab nations before the disastrous civil war of 1975 to1990 and despite recent political instability, Lebanon is still open to outside influences and that's how a small group of questing players first discovered Free Music a few years ago.

Since that time this same group has organized infrequent local gigs and hosts a yearly improv fest in Beirut. As an outgrowth of this activity, collaborations between Lebanese and outside musicians are beginning to appear on CD, like the three here. Fittingly, each features trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj - also an artist and author - chief cheerleader and coordinator of the nascent scene.

Present as well on Rouba3i5 and Oriental Space is Lebanese guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, who divides his time between Paris and Beirut and who helps spread the word about local improv. His wife, alto saxophonist Christine Sehnaoui, who plays on the first CD, took part with Kerbaj in Lebanon's first-ever improv gig in 2000.

Outsiders present on all three sessions testify to the Lebanese improvisers' successful outreach program. Oslo-based drummer Ingar Zach, who has worked with people like British guitarist Derek Bailey and bassist Barry Guy came to play at the improv festival and stayed to record Rouba3i5. Viennese trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, who has played with American guitarist Elliott Sharp and British drummer Tony Oxley, met Kerbaj by chance. Since then the two brass explorers have played duo concerts like the one approximated on Abu Tarek in Lebanon and Europe, and work as the Oriental Space quartet adding Sharif Sehnaoui and Vienna-based Helge Hinteregger, who has been part of Chris Burns' Ensemble as a saxophonist, on sampler.

Using only acoustic instruments, the four members of Rouba3i5 create two multi-faceted improvisations that, perhaps unsurprisingly, aren't reminiscent of any Middle Eastern sounds. Most impressive is the shorter - well less than 17 minutes - track, "Bustros Session 2", which, recorded with no cuts and no overdubbing, shows that the four have relaxed into rapprochement.

Launched by a punch from Zach's bass drum, followed by percussive rumbles and accents, the piece modulates into squeaks from the trumpet and tongue slaps from the alto saxophone. S. Sehnaoui then elaborates these statements with buzzing feints and what sounds like a drum stick hitting the front of his strings. Splayed strums then characterize his output as C. Sehnaoui expels cavernous blows and the drummer counters with presto woodpecker-like battering. When Zach transforms those smacks into road drill pressure, the alto squeals as the guitar advances the sort of metallic drones that could emanate from exposed telephone wires. Eventually these pulsations blend into one another, reaching a climax of irregular pitches, sharp oscillations and constricted cries, as Zach delineates an ending with his finger tips rubbing the drum tops.

Earlier, the almost-23-minute first selection is weakened by hushed passages that appear to lose volume due to lack of direction rather than as a stratagem. Luckily this happens infrequently, but some of the output could be a rehearsal for the finer points made in the second track. Oddly enough, C. Sehnaoui seems bolder here, with a catalogue of gestures that take in grace note expansion plus reed pops and tongue slaps. Mixing parakeet-like chirping with altissimo shrills, her sonic space is often invaded by amplifier drones and whammy bar distortions from the guitarist, abrasive scraping and woodpecker patterns from the drummer and bubbling tones and bumpy spetrofluctuation from trumpeter Kerbaj.

With S. Sehnaoui manipulating the only chordal instrument, Oriental Space, recorded in Vienna, reorders the sound priorities. Despite the presence of both Hautzinger and Kerbaj, the session isn't particularly brassy. Since Hinteregger is a saxophonist as well as a sampler player, the sequences introduced to the eight tracks often add pre-recorded extended reed textures to the live instrumental sounds.

Only on the final two selections "Fig Jam". a Lebanese delicacy – and "Later in the Afternoon" do extended samples of mumbling and murmuring male and human voices, take their places among finger-picking guitar runs and fervid brass mouthpiece osculation.

There may also be a snatch of an Arabic songster's voice midway through "In the Afternoon", the first instant composition. But this vocalization is buried beneath plinking guitar pulses, buzzy dual trumpet leads and a panoply of signals from the sampler including organ-like shakes, purported video game themes and what you could swear is the replication of a snooker ball rolling across the felt of a pool table.

Another anomaly is the intro to "Noujoum Funk", which replicates a stylus bumpily connecting to an LP groove. But this tune, like all the others, is designed as a showcase for acoustic instruments not electronics. Operating on top of the guitarist's hand smacks on his strings, the brassmen produce elongated drones, note flurries, choked textures and what appears to be tremolo air circulated through a cylindrical drainpipe.

Half-valve effects and watery bubbling appear on other tracks as the two trumpeters carve out individual territories. One, for instance, extends a single, unvarying buzzy line, while the other bugles a rubato rejoinder. Blocking air and spittle by valve twisting they change the density and tincture of their output. Harmonic concurrence to these prickly excursions is made easier on tunes like "Snow Sensitive Skin" since the concussion of foreign objects against Sehnaoui's strings and the mechanized, ring modulation-like sequences from the sampler redirect attention away from obstructed tubes and towards group expression.

Hautzinger and Kerbaj don't have this luxury on Abu Tarek where they improvise unaccompanied. Recorded in Lebanon, as was Rouba3i5, the disc highlights the density, volume and colors of two probing brass players. Impressionistic, at time the brass interchange takes on a jazzy subtext, although no one would confuse this CD for those 1950s Verve dates where Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge jousted musically.

With the nine tracks ranging from less than three to less than 7½ minutes, the two provide in condensed form a compendium of the procedures they mix with guitar and sampler textures on Oriental Space.

These take many forms. For example they can produce wet-sounding, rolling tongue thwacks, then turn their bells into cymbals as they beat on the metal while blowing through the lead pipe. Bugle-like calls take shape, but with sharp edges; strangled actions block pitches and broken octave grace notes are let loose. Barking, footstep-patterning tones and tongue fluttering are heard; as is air pushed through the instrument without valve movement.

Howls and whines plus animal-like whimpering are followed by throttled valve twisting that reveal sounds burrowed deep inside the horn. Elsewhere, a minimalist exercise in bubbled lip action and thwarted air pressure suddenly bursts forth with liberating wah-wahs and triumphant yelps.

Overall, Abu Tarek is most memorable when roles are divided and off-loaded. One trumpeter, for instance, plays a translucent note as the other fashions whinnying, desperate cries. Pedal point continuum is one's strategy as the other vibrates pitches concentrated with a blocked water key. Sibilant stops face off with valve percussion, and quick watery tones turn to foghorn breaths from the other hornman.

Free improvisation in Lebanon seems to be heading for international recognition as its partisans discover a characteristic originality in their playing and composing. Perhaps one day, musical happenings in Beirut will occupy the same space in the arts section of newspapers as its political events do on the news pages.

September 18, 2005

Multiphonics in the Middle East

Taking stock of Lebanon’s Improv scene
From CODA Issue 323

By Ken Waxman

“I was born the same year of the Lebanese war, and I lived in it until its end and in fact I’m more and more convinced that there’s a close relation between it and my kind of playing today,” explains Beirut-based trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, 30. “A lot of my passion for this music [Free Jazz] comes from my childhood, it reminds me unconsciously of the soundscapes of bombs and rifles that filled my ears during my childhood.”

War and bombs aside, the CD that so affected Kerbaj and his friends and introduced them to Free Jazz, was Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, complete with its war-like cover. This initiation soon led to he and other like-minded players amassing as many Free Improv CDs as they could by the likes of Evan Parker and Charlie Haden.

The lessons took so well that by 2000, Kerbaj and husband and wife improvisers, guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui and alto saxophonist Christine Sehnaoui – who spend part of the year in Paris – organized and played Beirut’s first improvised music gigs. Having established the only Free Scene anywhere in the Middle East outside of Israel, the three didn’t stop there. In 2001 they structured an annual International Festival for Free Improvised Music, called Irtijal – which means improvised in Arabic – in Beirut, and it’s still growing.

Having invited advanced players from France, Belgium, Germany, Norway and the United States to play alongside Lebanese improvisers in previous festivals, the most recent Irtijal festival and workshops, which took place in early July, came full circle to Kerbaj’s original influence. Saxophonist Brötzmann was a featured guest, playing in a duo with American drummer Michael Zerang. Among the other non-local participants were saxophonist John Dikeman and clarinetist Gene Coleman from the United States; British guitarist Mike Cooper; Swiss clarinetist Markus Eichenberger; and French guitarists Pascal Battus and Quentin Dubost, plus soprano saxophonist Stéphane Rives from Paris.

As well as their own solo spots, all the international musicians save Brötzmann played with local improvisers in formations ranging from trios to big bands. Additionally, improv concerts now take place outside the festival proper. In 2003, for instance, the Sehnaouis, Kerbaj and French-Vietnamese percussionist Lê Quan Ninh gigged in the village of Salima. This year the three Lebanese founders plus Zerang played in Deir El Kamar and adding Coleman, performed the first concert of improvised music in Zahleh, in eastern Lebanon

Zerang, who played in Cairo in the 1980s and in Yemen with Brötzmann in 2004 was impressed by the enthusiastic listeners. “I’m thrilled to be taking the music to a potentially new and different audience,” he declares. “I think this form of freely improvised music will reach a new audience at a very exciting time in their history. Having and icon like Peter [Brötzmann] here also gives the festival extra authenticity,” he adds.

Regarding his collaborations with local players, percussionist adds that “we western artists can learn a great deal from the artists in Lebanon, as their rich traditions of arts and culture are so obviously healthy and on display.”

Today, Lebanese audiences’ initial skepticism towards the music has disappeared, explains Kerbaj, with more than 100 people attending some festival concerts. “For a small country like Lebanon, that’s quite a lot.

“The audience is also special because they’ve never heard this music before and it’s a huge surprise for their ears and eyes. One day after a concert, for instance, a guy came up to me saying: ‘That’s great! You invented a new music.’ You rarely find these reactions in Europe.”

Even more gratifying to Kerbaj is the number of local musicians encouraged by the festivals and workshops who now play improvised music themselves. Although the number is small, the players come from different backgrounds including rock – sucvh as guitarist Charbel Haber – contemporary, ethnic musics and theatre – like bassist Raed Yassine, who is also an actor.

There are also limited opportunities to play outside the country, mostly in France where the Sehnaouis live, although Kerbaj himself did a short tour of the United States in 2004. Surprisingly, notes the trumpeter “our most incredible experience with a good audience was in Damascus [Syria].” This enthusiasm was for a trio made up of him, guitarist Sehnaoui and bassist Yassine, was “in a country where you can hardly even find a rock CD,” he adds.

More international players are finding their way to Lebanon and earlier this year a new label dedicated to improv called Al Maslakh (the slaughterhouse in Arabic) was created. Al Maslakh has so far released CDs by Rouba3i – which means quartet in Arabic – made up of Kerbaj and the Sehnaouis plus one additional instrumentalist, and Kerbaj’s solo disc.

Despite the country’s somewhat fractious political situation, an outgrowth of the 1975 to 1990 civil war and subsequent Syrian presence, the trumpeter maintains that improvisers are never bothered by censorship “because we are mainly ‘underground’ and nobody really hears about us, except people interested in what we do.”

With CDs available, more gigs with locals and outside players, Kerbaj hopes that one day what he describes as “the first Arabic scene for improv” will spread to neighboring countries like “Syria, Jordan and maybe even Iraq.”

Festival link: www.irtijal.com

Improvisers Website: www.zwyx.org/mill

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Lebanese Improv on CD
:

•Rouba3i5: Mazen Kerbaj, Ingar Zach (Norwegian drummer), Christine Sehnaoui and Sharif Sehnaoui (Al Maslakh 02)

•Brt Vrt Zrt Krt: Mazen Kerbaj trumpet solo (Al Maslakh 01)

•Abu Tarek: Mazen Kerbaj and Franz Hautzinger trumpets (Creative Sources CS 025)

•Franz Hautzinger’s Oriental Space: Mazen Kerbaj, Franz Hautzinger ,Sharif Sehnaoui, Helge Hinteregger (Artonal ARR 08)

•A: Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassine (Thèque ) –the first CD of Arab improv every released

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Improvisers active on the Beirut scene
:

*Marc Codsi - electric guitar

*Charbel Haber - electric guitar

*Mayalynn Hage - voice

*Jassem Hindi – clarinet and mixing board

*Abdallah K - laptop

*Mazen Kerbaj - trumpet

*Bechir Saadeh – clarinet and flute

*Christine Sehnaoui - alto saxophone

*Sharif Sehnaoui - electric guitar

*Raed Yassine - double bass

September 7, 2005