Rabih Abou-khalil's Journey To The Centre Of An Egg

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A new Rabih Abou-khalil's album announced by Enja Records. Since his first appearance in the early eighties, Rabih Abou-Khalil's sound and aesthetics have put their clear stamp on our perception of jazz and world music. Born in Lebanon in 1957 and at home in Central Europe since 1978, multi-award winner Abou-Khalil has developed an artistic style all his own. Arab scales, labyrinthine themes, odd metres and virtuosic improvisations are the core of his musical language that has become a vital part of our contemporary cosmos of sound. Over the years Abou-Khalil has proved his language in very different contexts -- with well-known jazz greats as well as master musicians from the east, classical string quartets, world music players or as an unaccompanied soloist on the oud. Based on divergent musical traditions, his music reaches for new forms of expression beyond folkloristic concepts.

What happens on "Journey to the Centre of an Egg", his album no. 13 for ENJA, is something new -- even for Rabih Abou-Khalil's standards. Joachim Kühn, the cosmopolitan piano player hailing from Leipzig, Germany and one of the best known jazz musicians in Europe, meets the oud player on a novel trip through Abou-Khalil's musical universe. Rooted in the music of J.S. Bach as well as Ornette Coleman and documented on more than 200 albums, 61-year-old Kühn brings his very refinement and rich experience into this unique meeting. He improvises with eloquence, adds contrapuntal lines and funky accents, brings the music to new shores, turns it all around and gets it safely home again. Here two masterful conceptions of music collide and cause an explosion of creativity.

Even the instrumentation on this album is a first: Abou-Khalil's brilliant playing of the oud (the Arab lute) combined with Kühn's piano (and saxophone!) and the artful drumming of Jarrod Cagwin, a long-time member in Abou-Khalil's regular band and deep into Turkish, African and Indian rhythms. The three of them go for quick-minded interaction full of amazing turns and humorous high points offering probably the most thrilling and most entertaining adventure to be found in today's improvised music.

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