Anouar Brahem
with Klaus Gesing - bass clarinet & soprano saxophone
& Björn Meyer - bass
@ the Barbican Centre
17 November 2024

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Biography

“We are all tributaries of the inspiration of the moment and that goes for all musicians… It’s the magic of the moment that counts along with the preparation. It’s all a question of collective inspiration.”

Anouar Brahem, born in Tunis in 1957, was ten when he began studying the oud at the National Conservatory in the city, and later pursued his apprenticeship with the great master Ali Sriti. As Stéphane Ollivier has written: “Brahem is the oud’s conjuror, a master at bringing out the acoustic magic which this age-old traditional Oriental lute carries inside its calabash: the musical heritage of the Arab and Islamic worlds.” Brahem undertook a mission to restore the oud to the status of an emblematic solo instrument in Arab music, and at the same time expanded the tradition by working with musicians from other idioms.

In 1981 Brahem moved to Paris for four years, where he collaborated with Maurice Béjart and composed numerous original works, notably for Tunisian films and theatre. On his return to Tunisia in 1985, he spent five years composing and giving the concerts which established his reputation. Brahem’s relationship with ECM dates from 1989, since when he has recorded ten albums. Barzakh was the beginning of a highly fruitful association, which has seen Brahem collaborate with some of the world's most talented musicians, whatever the genre or tradition, including Barbaros Erköse, Jan Garbarek, Dave Holland, John Surman and Richard Galliano.

The music of “Souvenance” (Remembrance, 2014) was written in the wake of political upheavals of the Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia. The album, by turns graceful, hypnotic, austere and starkly dramatic, is an oblique rather than direct engagement with those tumultuous events: “these events may have touched something deep within me which spoke. It wasn’t conscious, nor was it a desire to write something about this subject… When I write, I try to react with the emotions of the moment; it’s very personal”.