Wajdi Cherif - Phrygian Istikhbar

Wajdi Cherif - p
Diego Imbert - b
Habib Samandi - perc
Jeff Boudreaux - d

I received this CD on the 28th of october and have been completely taken by it, playing it three times in a row the morning I got it, and several more times since. Wajdi Cherif is a Tunisian pianist and as such mixes jazz and North African music. The particularity of his music is how natural it sounds. It can be put in the same ballpark as Rabih Abou-Khalil, but making the piano sound arabic is a challenge in itself, and Cherif comes up with beautiful results. The track titles hint at Cherif's position between France (he lives in Paris) and Tunisia: "Voyage," "Waiting For Paris" and "Tunis by Night." The title track seems to carry an unwieldy name, but in fact, "istikhbar" means improvisation in literary arabic and "phrygian" is the name of a mode.

The piano does not have a huge history in Tunisian music, for obvious reasons: its tempered nature does not lend itself to arabic music, with its quarter-tones, as naturally as stringed instruments. However, there is a tradition of vocal accompaniment (briefly cited in the closing "Tunis By Night") and nowadays many orchestras use synths. Cherif uses appogiatura (grace notes) and other forms of ornementation to achieve an "arabic" sound, to stunning effect. This procedure is neatly summed up right at the beginning of the disc, in the piano solo introduction to "Voyage." However, these colorations never sound like mannerisms. Rather, they ably convey his Arabic origins, just as his melodic and chiselled improvisations show how Cherif has absorbed jazz culture. On "Waiting For Paris," the pianist even abandons his Arabic side in favour of more Bill Evans-ish atmospheric playing.

The pianist is clearly the star here, but Habib Samandi is wonderful throughout on derbouka (a great percussion instrument in itself, it ranges from deep and booming when struck in the middle to high-pitched and metallic when struck at the edge, and being played with the fingers gives it great flexibility and subtlety), but especially so on the piano-derbouka duo "Phyrgian Istikhbar."

The only downside is that this is an EP rather than a full-length CD. At 30 minutes, I was definitely left wanting more. Quality over quantity.

The CD is available from Jazz Valley (for Europe) and CD Baby (for the USA).

Wajdi Cherif's website