Yara

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Rabih Abou-Khalil is a master of the oud, a kind of Persian lute; he is also one of the most fascinating and consistently successful composers working at the crossroads of indigenous and experimental musics. Over the last decade or more he has recorded and released a whole series of records for the German jazz label Enja. It is a remarkable body of work, seamlessly - and apparently effortlessly - melding Arabic classical forms and melodies with Western jazz improvisation and contemporary classical arrangements. As Harry Lachner points out in his sleevenotes to this latest instalment in Abou-Khalil's canon, the composer's music "has always been characterised by its vividly visual quality - concise and evocative parable relating to the production of imaginary images". Well, with this music, Abou-Khalil has had the opportunity to come up with music for actual images; Yara is the soundtrack to the film of the same name directed by Yilmaz Arslan. Abou-Khalil has certainly risen to the occasion, creating what I'd hazard is his best work to date. In the past Abou-Khalil has worked with a shifting pool of musicians which has included fellow Arabic players alongside often highly regarded jazzers such as Charlie Mariano and John Surman; his records have also often featured quite large ensembles. For Yara, however, he has put together a quartet of regular collaborators: himself on oud; violinist Dominique Pifarely; Vincent Courtois on cello; and frame drummer Nabil Khaiat. Their ensemble sound is breathtaking, with each of the melody players weaving improvised solo lines around each other or else playing heart stopping unison and harmony lines. The melodies themselves sit squarely between Arabic and European Romantic, and shot through with a strangely extrovert melancholy; the results could be so much overwrought schmaltz, but Abou-Khalil has far too much taste for that. Fusions this successful artistically are rare; I have my suspicions that Rabih Abou-Khalil's music goes widely ignored precisely because it works so well that there's very little to say about - it is simply wonderful.