Siwan Nahnou Houm

Description

For its first album on ECM in 2009, Siwan won numerous awards including the “Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” — The award for “best album of the year” given by the German critics. Today this international collective led by the Norwegian keyboardist, composer, and arranger Jon Balke, returns to the forefront by putting its exceptional instrumental strengths at the service of a new singer, the Algerian Mona Boutchebak.
It is the desire to highlight the connections between Arabic music, Andalusian classical music, and European baroque music that ignited Jon Balke's imagination when he embarked on this project 10 years ago now. To bring these sound universes even closer, he undertook to set the poetry of Al Andalus to music, reflecting a period of coexistence between the three major monotheistic religions. But Siwan has never aimed to be a “historical” project: it is contemporary creation, delivered by a group of musicians all endowed with strong personalities, putting their talents at the service of a singer deeply rooted in traditional Arabic music. This new album is expected to be released as Siwan embarks on a European tour.