Tunisian born oud master Anouar Braham has released a number of albums in intimate envrironments, but this time out he gets ambitious, and successfully so, by teaming up with a string quartet and a string orchestra along with a simpatico team of Francois Couturier/p, Klaus Gesing/bc and Bjorn Meyer/b for a journey into the desert nights.
Braham makes his strings cry on the luminescent pieces such as “Nouvelle Vague” and creates droplets of water with Courtuier on “Ashen Sky” while his musings team up with hazy strings on “Kasserine.” Whether via orchestra or a quartet of strings, there is wonderfully contemplative brooding on many of the reflective pieces with Braham entering at just the right time on the sand dunes on “Improbable Day” or the sunset sounding title track. The mood is meditative on “Youseff’s Song” and when Gesing enters with his subtones for “On the Road” you get lured into an air of mystique and intrique that is only broken by the dervish of “Deliverance.” As intoxicating as a night with in the starry night with Lawrence of Arabia.