Jazz review: Zoe & Idris Rahman, Where Rivers Meet
guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
Sep 25, 2008 20:00 EDT
The pianist Zoe Rahman has been a discreetly powerful force on the UK jazz scene for almost a decade. A Berklee jazz school graduate, she was taught by the formidable Joanne Brackeen, won the Perrier young jazz musician of the year award in 1999 and was nominated for a Mercury prize in 2006. Chichester-born Rahman turns to her Bengali heritage here - inspired by her father's old cassette collection of 50s Bengali folk, pop and movie themes, and by the work of Rabindranath Tagore. She and her clarinettist brother, Idris, have enlisted the support of jazz bassist Oli Hayhurst and drummer Gene Calderazzo to augment percussionist Kuljit Bhamra and several traditional performers. The melodies are delectable, and at times so startlingly Gypsy-like in their vivaciously chanting themes that they could have fitted on a Gilad Atzmon Orient House album. Rahman's low-register rolling figures, encouraging fills and occasional bursts into treble trills anchor this absorbing set, and constantly feed her brother's yearning clarinet lines and light-stepping flute. Sometimes, contemplative piano openings are drawn into accelerating dances, as on You Came Like Welcome Rain; Mind's Eye is downright funky. It's a distinctive, heartfelt and unusual world music venture.
Source: guardian.co.uk

