Fuller Street M. Kareem Roustom El-Zafeer Ensemble : Almitra's Question (var/US,2004)****
The same way composer/guitarist Kareem Roustom is from American/Syrian parents, his music shows a natural blend of influences. While at the moment Syrian Rabih Abouh-Khalil is most popular and known, I still think Rabih’s music suffers slightly from note-by-note paper-melodic writing (-with The Balanescu Quartet he succeeded bests to make the music sound more dynamically stretching and moving as a more vibrant alive performance-). The El-Zafeer Ensemble however never falls back on the written note thinking, but blends ideas, composition with some improvisation just perfectly. Zafeer means “exhaltation” which the music surely has. Basically this is jazzfusion with some Arab ideas and talents.
Kareem Roustom plays jazzguitar, Hanna Khoury plays a combination of Middle Eastern and jazzfusion violin improvisations. Bassplayer Danny Dunlap, like a bass should do adds a drive to the percussion, and stands between the melodic instruments and the percussion. The percussion by Catherine Alexander (riqq,daff), Lebanese born Souhail Kaspar (riqq,tabla) or Egyptian born Karim Nagi Mohammed (riqq,daff) is Arab/middle eastern. Argentinean born Fernando Huergo plays bass on one track, and Ronit Kirchman adds an additional violin on another track.
John Coltrane’s “Naima” gets an extra, unexpected Arab flavour. Completely fitting with the rest in style, a beautiful jazzfusion interpretation of Olivier Messiaan's "O Sacrum Convivium" is added as well. But Kareem's compositions are beautiful too. Favourites might be the titletrack "Almitra's Question" and the almost-flamenco-middle-eastern-jazzfusion "Burnt Onions".
