Anouar Brahem

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Anouar Brahem
Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Souvenance
  CH 82 01/18/2015 (1 week)
Blue Maqams
  DE 63 October 20, 2017 (1 week)
  AT 62 11/24/2017 (1 week)
  CH 23 10/22/2017 (6 weeks)

Anouar Brahem (born October 20, 1957 in Tunis - Halfaouine , Tunisia ) is a composer and a virtuoso on the Arabic short-necked lute oud .

Biographical

Anouar Brahem began studying the lute oud at the age of ten at the National Conservatory in Tunis ( Conservatoire national de musique de Tunis ) with the old master Ali Sriti . At the age of fifteen he was already playing in local orchestras and at eighteen he decided entirely to make music his profession. He received further private lessons in classical Arabic music from his teacher Ali Sriti. Gradually Brahem expanded his musical horizons, became interested in Indian and Iranian music and above all in jazz.

The purely traditional Arabic music, which was mainly played for entertainment and at weddings and in which his instrument only served as an accompaniment for singers, did not satisfy him in the long run. He began to write his own compositions and gave a series of solo concerts, which gradually found a positive response from the public and the press.

From his combination of the different modal peculiarities of the Eastern ( Mashreq ) and the Western ( Maghreb ) Arabic musical traditions with complex improvisations , Brahem's vision of a music far removed from nostalgic orientalisms , which currently characterizes the musical work in this area in part.

His urge for new experiences led him to Paris in 1981 , where he met numerous musicians of various genres. He stayed here for four years, composing intensively for Tunisian cinema and theater. Among other things, he wrote the music for Maurice Béjart's ballet Thalassa Mare Nostrum and for Costa-Gavras ' film Hanna K.

In 1985 he returned to Tunis. An invitation to the Carthage Festival brought him together with well-known musicians from the French jazz scene and others from Tunisian and Turkish music. With them came Project 85 , with which he won the Tunisian National Prize for Music.

In the following years he was involved in various projects. That brought him back to his musical roots. With a small ensemble, a Takht as the original form of the traditional orchestra, in which each instrumentalist acted both as a soloist and as an improvising musician, he wanted to revive the spirit and intimacy of classical Arab chamber music. He had another resounding success at the Carthage Festival in 1988.

After a tour through the USA and Canada, he met the producer Manfred Eicher in 1990 , with whom he has worked continuously since then and released all albums on the ECM label, which is considered audiophile . Recordings were made with numerous renowned jazz musicians, including the saxophonist Jan Garbarek , the bassist Palle Danielsson , the accordionists Richard Galliano and Jean-Louis Matinier, and the percussionist Lassad Hosni .

Anouar Brahem is an internationally recognized musician and composer who brings together Mediterranean and Oriental influences as well as elements of jazz. In 2010 he received an Echo Jazz in the other instruments category .

In December 2014, Souvenance celebrated its European premiere at the Prinzregententheater in Munich , the first music written by Brahem for a chamber orchestra . Together with Brahem, François Couturier (piano), Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet), Björn Meyer (bass guitar) and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra played in the arrangement of Johannes Berauer .

Style criticism in quotations

“The fact that Anouar Brahem's music is difficult to classify characterizes his artistic career. As a musician who doesn't fit into any category, to whom all possible definitions seem to apply from jazz to world music, he has created a freedom of expression that is unusual for his musical environment. There is apparently little space for a soloist between hits and bloated giant orchestras. But with patience and perseverance, Brahem managed to create a niche for his instrument, which seemed limited to the role of the accompanying instrument. "

“I don't consider myself a jazz musician or a jazz composer. Personally, I don't define myself in terms of labels. As a phenomenon of the record industry, this phenomenon has of course been around for a long time, ultimately so that the listener can find his way around. At first it would surprise me to find that my music is cataloged as jazz, but that doesn't really bother me. However , I don't want to find my CDs classified under Worldmusic , for me this is a category that lacks any seriousness and says nothing at all. "

“The most disappointing thing about Brahem's new quartet is that this music, in all its elegantly balanced beauty, sounds neither new nor fresh. Considered as an idiom, it is, expanded by a few world music accents, hard on the plan full fulfillment of the clichés that the sound of ... ECM Records has been accused of for forty years without ever having applied to the breadth of its production. "

“Music, changing wondrously between ethnic influences from different directions, between the composed and the freely continued. Brahem's earlier works for film and theater form the basis for reinterpretations and interpretations rich in associations in changing game constellations with French, Arabic and Scandinavian musicians. "

Discography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chart sources: Germany - Austria - Switzerland
  2. ↑ a b c according to information on the Brahems website
  3. ^ Ralf Dombrowski : Floating. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , No. 281, 6./7. December 2014, ISSN  0174-4917 , page R7.
  4. ↑ From the reasons for the award for Brahem at Echo-Jazz 2010, quoted on his website
  5. ↑ A. Brahem in an interview ( Memento from January 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Gregor Dotzauer : The well-tempered oud. In: Die Zeit , June 23, 2009.
  7. ↑ B. Noglik in HiFiVision, 5/95
  8. ↑ Gold / platinum database of the Federal Music Industry Association, accessed June 19, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Brahem, Anouar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Tunisian oud player and composer
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Tunis - Halfaouine , Tunisia