Ejdeha

Gordon Grdina is a guitarist and oud (lute) player with one foot in Vancouver and another in New York. Originally the guitar took precedence for Grdina, alongside jazz and improvising, but since he began studying the oud around 15 years ago, he has become increasingly immersed in Eastern musics. Now he pretty much splits his musical time equally between these axes. His group, The Marrow, was initially a trio with cellist Hank Roberts and bassist Mark Helias, but the line-up has expanded to include Iranian percussionist Hamin Honari. Grdina's original compositions are mainly in an introspective, expressive mood, emerging from a maqam (modal) root, but also delivered via a jazz sensibility. ‘Telesm’ has a spacious, stately motion, while ‘Idiolect’ involves a slow, graceful exchange between players, with relationships and varying prominences evolving before a striding character develops. Grdina sounds immersed in Arabic and Persian traditions, but Roberts uses a stronger jazz vocabulary and avant-garde classical tonalities. Grdina operates on speculative and enquiring planes as Honari drags, scrapes and scuffs his fingers across a daf (frame drum), or raps and rattles his tombak (goblet drum), but it's often Roberts who takes the wildest solos, placed more prominently and delivered with greater vigour.