Anouar Brahem: After the Last Sky (CD Review)

 by Karl Nehring

Remembering Hind; After the Last Sky; Endless Wandering; The Eternal Olive Tree; Awake; In the Shade of Your Eyes; Dancing Under the Meteorites; The Sweet Oranges of Jaffa; Never Forget;Edward Said’s Reverie; Vague. Anouar Brahem, oud; Anja Lechner, cello; Django Bates, piano; Dave Holland, double bass. ECM 2838

 

Over the past decade or so I have grown into an admirer of the music of the Tunisian oud player and composer Anouar Brahem (b.1957). In preparing to write this review of his most recent release, I thought I would do a quick search of the archives to see whether I had ever previously reviewed any recordings by this remarkable musician. I felt as though I had, but could not remember which recording it would have been – The Astounding Eyes of Rita (ECM 2075), perhaps? Or maybe Souvenance (ECM 2423/24)?  As it turned out, my search revealed that much to my surprise, I never have reviewed any of his albums here at Classical Candor. However, my search did not come up blank; happily enough, it revealed that four years ago I had reviewed an album (Lontano, ECM 2682) by one of the musicians here, German cellist Anja Lechner (b. 1961), in which along with pianist François Couturier she plays among other things some music composed by Brahem (you can find that review here). Now Lechner finds herself in Brahem’s quartet alongside with veteran members British pianist Django Bates (b. 1960), who appeared on Brahem’s Blue Maqams album (ECM 2580)  from 2017 along with legendary Chicago-born drummer Jack DeJohnette (b. 1942) and the bassist on this album, the equally legendary British musician Dave Holland (b. 1946), who first recorded with Brahem on the former’sThimar album (ECM 1641) from 1998.

The CD booklet offers an essay on the music that Brahem briefly introduces by writing: “While preparing the music for this album, the tragedy of Gaza was very much on my mind. After reading author Adam Shatz’s previous writing on the subject, I invited him to contribute this essay.”  In his essay, Shatz, who is the American editor for the London Review of Books, assures prospective listeners who might be put off by Brahem’s reference to Gaza that “the glory of music, formalists teach us, lies precisely in its pristine, non-referential nature, its transcendence of politics and history. Rest assured, formalists: After the Last Sky stands on its own as music.”

 

All the compositions are by Brahem except for The Eternal Olive Tree, which is by Brahem and Holland. The interplay among the four musicians flows naturally and unforced, the music coming across as an amalgam of chamber and world music. The opening track, for example, Remembering Hind, is a brief duet for cello and piano that sounds as if it could be an excerpt from a cello sonata. The mood throughout the album is generally restrained, reflexive, at times – as in the track Endless Wandering – bordering on somber. The Eternal Olive Tree livens things up a bit, however, as Holland and Brahem engage in an energetic exchange. The penultimate track, Edward Said’s Revenge, is a melancholy reverie played, as was the opening track, by Lechner and Bates alone. The closing track, Vague, brings back the full quartet, with Lechner’s cello weaving a melancholy spell echoed and augmented by the other three players. Shatz points out in his notes that Brahem had long hoped to work with Lechner; he had never before featured a cello on one of his albums. The end result is an album of extraordinary beauty, the four musicians combining to produce an album of breathtaking beauty, chamber music of haunting emotional subtlety. The warm, natural, spacious ECM engineering makes this just adds to the luster of this sparkling gem.