Chants des Trois Cours

Lebanese-Canadian singer Lamia Yared's album explores three of the traditions that created the Ottoman musical world: Turkic, Arabic and Persian, represented by the courts of Constantinople, Samarkand and Tabriz. But the music here travels even further: Ottoman composers that worked in Cairo such as Zekai Dede Efendi and Neyzen Aziz Dede; Egyptian sheikh Abdallah al-Sharqawi; Sufi Omar al-Batch from Aleppo; Abd al-Qadir Maraghi and Hammamizade İsmail Dede Efendi.

All pieces are maqam-based, but differ rhythmically both in the poetic metre and in time signatures. Space is given to the lesser-known repertory of the Syrian muwashshah: an Arabic-Andalusian poetic genre that created a musical form in Aleppo. Lamia Yared's group of instrumentalists are steeped in the three traditions: oud player Nazih Borish, Reza Abaee on ghaychak (the Iranian bowed lute), Turkish kanun player Didem Başar, percussionists Joseph Khoury (on riq and bendir) and Ziya Tabassian on tombak, as well as Noémy Braun on cello and Jérémi Roy on bass. Lamia Yared's voice, negotiating the musical and linguistic asperities of the music brilliantly, brings it all to life with vibrant emotion and elegant phrasing above the rich textures created by her band.