Deux formations emblématiques du jazz européen e.s.t. et New Conception of Jazz s’associent pour créer une nouvelle entité forte : Bugge Wesseltoft retrouve ainsi Magnus Öström et Dan Berglund (partenaires de feu Esbjörn Svensson) au sein du trio Rymden, pour un premier album à la personnalité forte, à la dynamique et l’énergie loin des clichés méditatifs / zen parfois faciles d’un jazz scandinave trop prévisible :
Une dynamique rugueuse, une technique de jeu complexe mais attractive, un son épique et cinématographique chargé en drama, en tension et en relâchement.
La musique de Rymden (espace en suédois) est portée par des mélodies fortes, des unissons chargés en combustible brut prêt à s’embraser, emplis de ce minimalisme dissimulé dans de riches tapisseries d’improvisation effrénée.
Une présence menaçante qui rôde, cachée dans ces manipulations électroniques subtiles d’un Wesseltoft, entre piano et Rhodes, tandis que Berglund et Öström explorent la quasi-totalité des sons possibles avec leurs instruments respectifs.
Bien que Bugge Wesseltoft ait souvent été présenté comme un musicien avec un véritable penchant pour les musiques en provenance d’horizons variés (cf. ses travaux avec Prins Thomas, récemment), il sait aussi apprécier lorsqu’une musique aux codes bien arrêtés se présente comme l’expression d’une identité profonde et singulière. En tant que véritable défenseur du “jazz européen en tant qu’art à part entière”, voici Bugge de retour au format trio jazz, épaulé par l’incontournable section rythmique suédoise composée de Magnus Öström et Dan Berglund, tous deux membres de feu le trio E.S.T. (Esbjorn Svensson Trio).
Les groupes New Conception of Jazz (dans lequel Bugge officie) et E.S.T. ont toujours eu des orbites différentes autour de la même planète; et ont contribué à produire quelques uns des albums et des concerts qui ont projeté la musique des années 90 dans le nouveau millénaire. L’influence des deux formations précitées s’est avérée profonde et peut toujours être ressentie aujourd’hui dans l’émergence de nouveaux talents de Scandinavie et d’ailleurs; la plupart d’entre eux ayant trouvé en Jazzland Recordings, le label de Bugge Wesseltoft, un îlot important pour développer leur musique et laisser éclore leurs projets respectifs.
Mais E.S.T. et New Conception Of Jazz ont toujours été avant tout des groupes d’explorateurs, d’expérimentateurs testant les limites des formes existantes tout en essayant de défricher de nouveaux territoires musicaux.
Que la rencontre entre ces deux collectifs incontournables du jazz européen du XXIème siècle finisse par se concrétiser n’est une surprise pour personne. Avec la création de Rymden (“espace” en suédois), c’est une musique résolument ancrée dans la culture scandinave dans son esprit et son attitude que nous voyons éclore devant nous.
Biographie
Discographie
Album Reflections & Odysseys Le 8 février 2019 chez Jazzland, distribution France Pias/Harmonia Mundi
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the album. And the interest of the audience is
still there, as if it was the first year.
On tour 2019/2020
With:
Anouar Brahem: oud
Klaus Gesing: bass clarinet
Björn Meyer: bass
Khaled Yassine: darbouka, bendir
A delightful new assembled by Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem.
The combination of the bass clarinet with the oud suggests a link to Anouar's
Thimar trio, but this East/West line-up often feels closer to the more
traditionally-inclined sounds of Barzakh or Conte de l'Incroyable Amour.
Klaus Gesing, from Norma Winstone's Trio, and Björn Meyer, from Nik Bärtsch's Ronin, are
both players with an affinity for musical sources beyond jazz, and they interact
persuasively inside Brahem's music.
A dance of dark, warm sounds, urged onward by the darbouka and frame drum of Lebanese
percussionist Khaled Yassine. The album is dedicated to the memory of Palestinian poet
Mahmoud Darwish.
With:
Anouar Brahem: oud
Dave Holland: doublebass
Jack DeJohnette: drums
Django Bates: piano
Prestigious European tours in April 2018 and March 2019
Uppsala, Konsert & Kongress (Sweden) | Berlin, Boulez Saal (Germany) | London, Barbican (England)
| Dublin, The National Concert Hall (Ireland) | Lyon, Auditorium (France)
| Anvers, De Roma (Belgium) | Luxembourg, Philharmonic (Luxembourg)
| Morges, Théâtre de Beausobre (Switzerland) | Köln, Kölner Philharmonic (Germany)
| Paris, Paris Philharmonic (France) | Blagnac, Odyssud (France) | Zurich, Tonhalle (Germany)
| Basel, Musical Theater (Switzerland) | Munich, Philharmoni (Germany) | Hamburg, Elbphilharmonic (Germany)
| Lisbon, Gulbenkian Música (Portugal) | Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts (Belgium)
Potential 2020/2021 tour with:
Anouar Brahem: oud
Dave Holland: doublebass
Django Bates: piano
Nasheet Waits: drums
In recent years Anouar Brahem has carried his ideas on marrying the formal sophistication
of Western chamber music and the richness of the age-old Arab musical tradition a long
way. But now, with Blue Maqams, he is taking up his fascination for jazz once again.
Here, we might say he picks up again where he left off twenty years ago with the album
Thimar. This time round, he planned another small group with some highly talented
jazzmen for his new recording to be made in New York in spring, 2017. In fact, this was to
be a delightful reunion including Dave Holland again, plus the jubilation and harmonic
sophistication of Django Bates on piano and the subtle rhythms of legendary drummer Jack
DeJohnette. Based on original compositions combining superb melodic refinement with a
deliberately simple formal organization to allow space and total freedom for the powerful
creative talent of whoever is improvising, Anouar Brahem develops a lyrical universe here
that is both utterly coherent in aesthetic terms, whilst offering a wide range of varying
moods. Showing his total commitment to rhythm as well as expression, he works simultaneously
on finely woven blends of timbre, the delicate balance of the dynamics between
instruments and the ever-richer passages constant interaction between these great
improvisers gives rise to.
In April 2018, a few months after the official release date of the album, the quartet
undertook a tour across Europe where they appeared in several large, prestigious concert
halls such as the Philharmonie de Paris, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the
Philharmonie in Munich.
Souvenance
, former album, January 2015, ECM
On tour 2019/2020
Music for oud
This project is performed in 2 formations:
- the quartet
with Anouar Brahem (oud), François Couturier (piano), Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet ), Björn Meyer (bass)
- the quartet plus a string orchestra of 20 musicians
Probably Anouar Brahem has never gone so far into the balance between formal elegance and
freedom of expression, lyricism and restraint, sensuality and asceticism, as he does here
with this new repertoire which seems to ideally synthesize almost fifteen years of his
personal and aesthetic quest for an authentic "common understanding" between Orient and
Occident. Leading a brand-new Quartet, Brahem here revisits every facet of a musical
universe that is at once melancholy and introspective in integrating his sensibilities and
instrumental language—undeniably anchored in the Arab tradition—with the Impressionist,
evanescent piano of colourist François Couturier, the pulsing sensuality of Björn Meyer's
electric bass, and the misty, dreamlike, Nordic romanticism from the bass clarinet of
Klaus Gesing.
As if to further emphasize the hybrid nature of his universe, here Brahem plunges his
quartet for the first time into the sound-fabric of arrangements that are both sumptuous
and minimalist, orchestrating a string-ensemble where the soloists (beginning with the
melodic enchantments of the oud) are presented in an organic, voluptuous setting which is
particularly stimulating. With ever more refinement in its melodic lines and at once
contemplative and subtly narrative in its developments, the music contained in
Souvenance possesses those qualities of self-evidence, naturalness and simplicity
which are the hallmarks of works of genuine inspiration.
Anouar Brahem is the oud's conjuror, an authentic 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 is a phenomenon, a concentrated mix of prolific paradoxes: he is a supremely subversive classicist; a solitary soloist, resolutely open to the world; and a "culture smuggler", a man ever inclined to venture beyond his own limits and push back musical frontiers... without yielding an inch to aesthetic standards forged across time and tempered with deep respect for tradition.
Because he has always recognized this fundamental complexity, it has become his strength. And because he's sought to weave this abundance of influences and disparate passions inside the very material of his work and compositions for nearly forty years, Anouar Brahem now creates music free of any named traditional influences but rather in his own image, with the bewitching poetic colours of the oud to enrich a host of diverse musical canvases.
From the rich repertoire of Jazz - John Surman, Dave Holland, Jan Garbarek and Jack DeJohnette are just some of the leading players to succumb to Brahem's melodic spells - to the multiple and diverse traditions of Mediterranean and Oriental influence, (from his native Tunisia to the confines of India and Iran), his sensitive yet rigorous music constantly redefines a cleverly composite universe of poetry and culture, ever balancing between discretion and sensuality, nostalgia and contemplation.
Some landmarks...
Born in 1957 in Halfaouine, in the heart of the Medina in Tunis, Anouar Brahem was ten when he began studying the oud at the National Conservatory in Tunis, and later pursued his apprenticeship with the great master Ali Sriti; it was an entry deep into the art of the maqamat, highly complex, ancestral and modal, in the Arab tradition of classical music.
In an Arab musical environment where popular songs and crowded orchestras dominated - the oud was reserved for accompaniment - Brahem revealed his complex and multi-faceted personality by spontaneously undertaking a personal mission to restore the oud to the status of an emblematic solo instrument in Arab music, whilst at the same time breaking with tradition in his work as a composer by integrating elements of jazz and other musical traditions from the Orient and the Mediterranean into his new works.
In 1981, motivated by the desire to team up with other musicians from a variety of different aesthetic backgrounds, he moved to Paris for four years. It was to be a decisive period for him: he collaborated with Maurice Béjart and above all, composed numerous original works, notably for the Tunisian cinema and theatre. This was fertile ground for his orchestral experiments, because he introduced new ways of playing and even hitherto unknown instruments into the fundamental Arab tradition.
On his return to Tunisia in 1985, he continued to do research in the field of composition. The first performance of Liqua 85, an ambitious work that brought Turkish gypsy and Tunisian musicians and certain French jazzmen together (Abdelwaheb Berbech, the Erköse Brothers, François Jeanneau, Jean-Paul Celea, François Couturier and others...) earned him a major prize, the Tunisian Music Award, and with the subsequent acclaim, the offer of the post of conductor for the City of Tunis Music Ensemble. He remained at the head of this institution until 1990, opening minds and talents to creative innovation and improvisation, whilst pursuing some thorough work on the classical repertoire. Recognized by now as one of the most innovative of contemporary Arab musicians of his generation, Anouar became a reference with young composers and oud players. He had established a firm reputation with his peers and the public alike.
In 1989, Anouar Brahem experienced another decisive turn in his career when he met producer Manfred Eicher, who gave him the opportunity to record Barzakh for his highly prestigious ECM label. This first album was to mark the beginning of a particularly fruitful association which, in the space of almost thirty years, has seen Anouar Brahem in the company of some of the world's most talented musicians, whatever the genre or tradition: Barbarose Erköse, Jan Garbarek, Dave Holland, John Surman, Jack DeJohnette, and Richard Galliano, to name only a few. To date, Brahem has recorded no fewer than 11 albums, all of which have been acclaimed by the public and the international critics. This eclectic but coherent discography includes: Conte de L'Incroyable Amour (1991), Madar (1994), Thimar (1998), Le Pas Du Chat Noir (2002), The Astounding Eyes Of Rita (2009), Souvenance (2014) and today Blue Maqams (2017) - all innovatory and timeless albums, allowing Anouar Brahem to confirm over and over again his role as one of the rare composers and musicians able to create music both rooted in a highly sophisticated but ancestral culture and eminently contemporary in its global ambition.
Particularly interested in art in all its forms, Anouar Brahem composed parallel to his own works a great deal of music for cinema, theatre and dance in Tunisia during the 80s and 90s; then, in 2006, his love for films became tangible when he directed and coproduced his first documentary film Mots d'après la Guerre, made in the Lebanon following the war between Israel and the Hezbollah. The film was selected for the Locarno Film Festival.
In 2012, shortly after the revolution in Tunisia, he was named a Life Member of the "Beit El Hikma", the Tunisian Academy for Science, the Arts and Literature, and two years later, the CD Souvenance was released - an ambitious double album that is both a luxury aesthetic synthesis of 15 years of experiment in quest of an authentic "meeting ground for reciprocal understanding" between Orient and Occident, and his offbeat response, highly personal and reflective, to the events in Tunisia early in 2011. An audience of no less than 7,500 gave him and his demanding music a standing ovation at its first public performance during the 50th anniversary of the Carthage Festival.
Today, more than ever, Anouar Brahem continues to make regular appearances on the most prestigious stages all over the world, as well as recording more enchanting albums, to the delight of an ever-increasing public as well as his many loyal "fans".
Awards
De Klara's Classical Music Awards: "Best International CD - World" for Blue Maqams (Belgium, 2018)
Echo Jazz Award: "Best International Musician of the Year" for The Astounding Eyes of Rita (Germany, 2010)
Edison Award for Le Voyage de Sahar (The Netherlands, 2006)
Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics' Award) for Thimar (Germany, 1998)
The album is at once an extension and an audacious departure from the tradition of the oud. Despite his formidable knowledge of the maqarnat, an ornate system of modes that anchors Arabic music, he seldom bases his improvisations directly on the maqams. His phrasing is pure and uncluttered, expressing itself through silence nearly as often as sound. ... Composed of elegantly flowing lines and somber, breathlike silences, the music shimmers with the overtones of the piano. ... Mr. Brahem bases several of the tunes on spare, broken chords, repeated in the childlike manner of Satie. Simple though they are, however, they contain beguiling Arabesques. The three musicians rarely appear at once, performing as a trio on only seven of the album's 12 tracks. For the most part, you hear duets - piano and oud, oud and accordion, accordion and oud. The musicians often double each other's lines, but seldom in unison, which enhances the music's intimacy while producing a floating, echo effect.If every band projects "an image of coummunity," as the critic Greil Marcus once suggested, then Mr. Brahem's trio - part takht, part jazz trio, part chamber ensemble - evokes a kind of 21st century Andalusia, in which European and Arab sensibilities have merged so profoundly that the borders between them have dissolved. The image may be utopian, but its beauty is undeniable.
Adam Shatz, The New York Times
Throughout the record, the musicians maintain an exquisite balance and make only subtle changes in tempo or tone. Their sense of melancholy is so natural and comfortable it's childlike. On this tune, "Leila and the Land of the Carousel" a waltzing rhythm and revolving melody suggest a girl on that classic joyride...When he quit the oud for a while and played the piano instead, Anouar Brahem recovered his powers of musical myth-making. On this record, he creates a fairy tale setting and ultimately a storybook ending. The accordion lays down sustained chords like lengthening shadows in a forest. The piano conjures low-key sunlight and offers overtones of reconciliation. And in the arabesque path of "The Black Cat's Footsteps," Brahem finds a way back home to his beloved oud and to the songbird inside.
"All things considered", USA - National Public Radio
