David Dalle
Thursday January 12th, 2023 with David Dalle
The Morgenland All Star Band Part I: Live in Hannover

This is the first of two programs showcasing the Morgenland All Star Band. This group is comprised of multinational/multiethnic musicians who, individually, are mainstays of the Morgenland Festival. Founded in 2005, the Morgenland Festival is an annual festival which takes place every summer in the German city of Osnabrück. It focuses on music of the Near and Middle East, from traditional music to classic and avant-garde, jazz and rock. The Morgenland All Star Band was actually born in Damascus, with a chance encounter in a restaurant between clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh, and leader of the Syrian Big Band, Hannibal Saad, who was having dinner with Syrian composer Nouri Iskandar and Morgenland festival director Michael Dreyer. This led to Kinan Azmeh becoming a central figure at the Morgenland festival and the creation the All Star Band which first performed at the festival in 2012. The musical backgrounds of the band members are as diverse as they are deep, here is a brief description of the musicians: "As it should be with an All Star Band, each of the musicians involved had made a name for him- or herself before their first joint performance in Osnabrück in 2012 —both in the diverse world of Western music and in the equally diverse one of the Middle East and Northern Africa, in jazz as well as in the classical repertoire. A good example of this is the tuba and serpent virtuoso Michel Godard, who is at home in many different styles. The trumpeter Frederik Köster is among the most high-profile and creative protagonists of the experimentally inclined jazz scene in Cologne; drummer Bodek Janke moves virtuosically and authentically between the fields of Western classical music and jazz, but also of classical Indian music. Or consider Salman Gambarov from Baku in Azerbaijan: the pianist takes inspiration from Bach’s polyphony, turns John Lennon’s Imagine into an enchanting jazz reverie and combines it all with the scales, rhythms, and meters of his musical roots. Moslem Rahal has a similar background: firmly rooted in the tradition of his native Syria, he has also brought his mastery of the woodwind instrument ney to Jordi Savall’s ensemble Hespèrion XXI for many years. Rony Barrak has played the goblet drum darbuka not only with Chick Corea, but also with the Austrian percussionist Martin Grubinger. Singer Dima Orsho and Kinan Azmeh were both born and raised in Damascus and went on to study classical singing and clarinet, respectively, in the US. They explore their Arabic roots by performing together with the ensemble Hewar, among others. Violinist Ziya Gückan experienced a similar form of musical socialization; the Turkish musician is a member of the orchestra of the Izmir Opera. Bass player Andreas Müller not only is the “local” Osnabrück element of the Morgenland All Star Band, but with his absolute reliability, even in the face of the most complex chord sequences and rhythms, has become something of the band’s eye of the storm. Last but not least, singer Ibrahim Keiva brings a true element of traditional music to the All Star Band: just as Béla Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly recorded the folk music of their Hungarian-Romanian homelands in the early 20th century, Keivo collected the music of the Kurds, Yazidis, and Syrians—until the civil war drove him from his home in the region of Al-Jazeera in Northwestern Syria." In part I, we will hear their first concert recording, recorded in Hannover in 2013.