Hungry People (Deluxe Edition) Rabih Abou-Khalil

• 1 Shrilling Chicken 04:10
• 2 When The Dog Bites 05:10
• 3 A Better Tomorrow 06:40
• 4 Banker's Banquet 05:28
• 5 Dreams Of A Dying City 05:35
• 6 Fish And Chips And Mushy Peas 04:42
• 7 Hats And Cravats 06:08
• 8 When Frankie Shot Lara 06:30
• 9 If You Should Leave Me 07:02
• 10 Shaving Is Boring, Waxing Is Painful 04:46
• 11 L'Heure Du Croissant 06:55
• Total Runtime 01:03:06

Info for Hungry People (Deluxe Edition)

Hungry People has all the fundamentals of Rabih Abou-Khalil's writing and playing: music performed with a passion and an intuitive understanding between Abou-Khalil and his “Mediterranean Quintet”.Unique and yet strangely familiar, the music is delivered with a touch of humour despite the recent economic, social and political upheavals that inspired it.

Since the early eighties, Rabih Abou-Khalil, born in Lebanon and currently living in France, has managed to raise the oud, the primary instrument in Arabic culture, to a high level of prominence in contemporary music. With his original compositional style, his unconstrained, daring approach he has found a rhythmic and melodic musical language entirely his own.

Rabih Abou-Khalil, oud
Luciano Biondini, accordion
Jarrod Cagwin, drums
Gavino Murgia, soprano saxophone
Michel Godard, tuba, serpent

Rabih Abou-Khalil
Born and raised in the cosmopolitan climate of Beirut in the sixties and seventies, Rabih Abou-Khalil leaned to play the oud, the Arabian short-necked lute, at the age of four. In the Arab world this instrument is as popular as the guitar or the piano in the West and is the composer's instrument par excellence. The Lebanese civil war forced hirn to leave his country in 1978 to study dassical flute in the German city of Munich, where he was tutored at the Munich Academy of Music by Walther Theurer. The analytical preoccupation with the European dassical tradition enabled him to grasp Arabic music from a further, theoretical position, opening his eyes to the possibility of operating simultaneously within musically divergent systems. Whereas Arab instrumentalists were content to imitate human voice techniques, Abou-Khalil set out to explore new ways of playing his instrument. Music critics have even recommended his accomplished technique as a "study for jazz guitarists"; his ballads, on the other hand, rekindle memories of the poetic dawn of Arabian culture, without ever sounding even remotely traditionalistic.

Rabih Abou-Khalil has asserted himself in the avant-garde as a composer as well as an instrumentalist. This is not just because he is ahead of his time - but because he also questions what others might pursue without further reflection. With his original composing technique, his unconstrained, yet daring approach to dassical Arabic music, he has found a musical language entirely his own. Commissioned by the Südwesrfunk (Southwest German Radio), Abou-Khalil wrote two unusual compositions for string quartet in his own rhythmically and melodically charged style. The maiden performance with the Kronos String Quartet was the highlight at the Stuttgart Jazz Summit in 1992. On his CD, "Arabian Waltz", with the Balanescu String Quartet he successfully integrated the string quartet - for centuries the domain of European classical music - into his musical language.

What superficially appears to be a chance encounter between opposing instruments and a seemingly antagonistic dash of talents from different musical worlds is in fact the result of a well pondered upon concept. Under Abou-Khalil's guidance these undeniable differences by no means descend into Babylonian confusion. On the contrary, the cosmopolizan musicians from different cultural backgrounds draw inspiration from their shared intuitive understanding of the serious challenge they face in interpreting Abou-Khalil's music. The intellectual and emotional identification with these compositions unleashes charges of enthusiasm in each of the players, inciting new heights of musical mastery. Yet the temptation of individual one-upmanship is never as strong as the collective innovative endeavor and exploration into uncharted terrain. The highly varied works by Abou-Khalil - all nonetheless derived from this very elixir - now stand in their own right, extending so far beyond convention that they somehow elude all fixed categories. Abou-Khalil's music thrives on creative encounters and not on exoticism. From a combination of diverse cultural elements something very personal and coherent emerges. Thus it would be fruitless ro mull over descriptions such as Orient or Occident, jazz, world music or classical.

Commissioned by the BBC Concert Orchestra to write music for orchestra, Abou-Khalil wrote works that were performed in London and Chichester. For another project for the German city of Duisburg he chose ro collaborate wim the Ensemble Modern, one of the most renowned orchestras specializing in contemporary music. "While working with Rabih Abou-Khalil, I was starkly reminded of a saying by Herbert von Karajan: 'Do not pIay the bar along with the music, play across the measure'." That was how Dietmar Wiesner, the flute player of the Ensemble Modem, summed up his impressions from the rehearsals: "Unbelievably fine, irregular rhythms, masterfully formed into melodic chains that remain in a floating condition, never setting to land, and thus reaching a high level of charm that relentlessly pulls the listener imo its magic."

This album contains no booklet.