SAWA

Description

A trio of British-Iraqi composer and vocalist Alya Al-Sultani, award-winning composer and pianist Clemens Christian Poetzsch from Leipzig and cellist Shirley Smart, a leading improviser and cross-genre musician who had spent a decade in Jerusalem immersed in the music of the region.

SAWA’s free improvisations and treatments of folk music wander through space and clusters of notes, distortion and pure sound, drawing on a deep musical and personal chemistry between Alya’s Arabic singing, Clemens’ love of polyrhythmic treatments and Shirley’s synaesthetic improvising power to take you on a journey through Iraqi and Arabic folk songs as you’ve never heard them before.

“The pick of the bunch, drawing passionately on elements from middle-eastern folk, minimalism, improv and classical music.” (Jazzwise review of Manchester Jazz Festival 2017)