Last year, the virtuoso saxophonist John Butcher performed at the Holland Festival in Christian Marclay’s Everyday. This year he will stage his own production in Amsterdam, together with drummer Mark Sanders. The title of the show, Tarab Cuts, refers to an Arab concept which describes to the merger between music and emotional transformation. Butcher and Sanders combine their own compositions and improvisations with reworked multi-track recordings of classical Arabic and traditional Sufi music which Butcher took from a multitude of 78 rpm records from the early to mid 1900’s. The result is an exciting encounter of two very different worlds, an adventurous exploration of new terrain.
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Thu June 26 2014 10:30 PM
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Duration of performance unknown (zonder pauze)
In 2011, John Butcher was commissioned by the curators of New York’s live-art biennial Performa to compose a 15 minute piece inspired by the concept of Tarab. His composition was to be part of the 5-hour performance Visiting Tarab, conceived and programmed by the Lebanese musician Tarek Atoui as a modern day response to the classical Arabic music in the enormous private collection (7000 78s from 1903-1950) of Kamal Kassar in Beirut. Butcher wrote Tarab Cut for soprano and tenor saxophones plus a multi-tracked recording derived from some of these shellacs. The live playback reworked elements of solo ney, oud, violin and Sufi drumming and singing.
He has performed this, as part of Atoui’s project, in New York, Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), The Serpentine Gallery in London and as a separate piece at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Out Of The Machine commissioned Butcher to expand the work into a full concert presentation, and he invited drummer Mark Sanders to join him. Tarab Cuts premiered on 21 February 2014 in Bristol. The notion of tarab is rooted in a pre-1930s repertoire of Arabic classical music, largely thought to be thereafter diluted and diminished – although it has been argued that its essence remains alive in Egyptian Sufi chant.
Butcher has taken his inspiration for Tarab Cuts from these characteristic qualities of the Tarab concept, but it’s not an attempt to copy this music. It is an interaction across decades and cultures that throws an intriguing light on the contemporary musical practice of Butcher and Sanders. A meeting of distant voices with their own, in pursuit of both common and unfamiliar ground. John Butcher is one of the most prolific and versatile performers and creators today. His commitment to the development of the saxophone has genuinely extended the instrument’s voicings and range. Tarab Cuts sees him exploring further the methods of improvisation in relation to ancient compositional and devotional qualities found in Sufi music and Tarab.
