Layale Chaker & Sarafand: Inner Rhyme
In a Circle Records
Layale Chaker's Inner Rhyme is a distinguished addition to the catalogue of In a Circle Records, the imprint founded in 2008 by Brooklyn Rider's Johnny Gandelsman. Though the Lebanese violinist recorded her debut album in New York during the summer of 2018, its contents primarily draw for inspiration from Eastern traditions, Arabic most of all, even if a strong connection to Western jazz also emerges. Chaker is joined on the recording by a stellar cast, namely Sarafand members Jake Charkey (cello), Phillip Golub (piano), Nick Dunston (bass), and Adam Maalouf (percussion).
Groundwork for the project began when Chaker immersed herself in performances of Lebanese oral poetry, wedding chants, and Sufi remembrance recitations and came to better appreciate the prominent roles poetry and music play in Lebanese life. After spending countless hours absorbing the material (and ultimately translating twelve classical Arabic poetic meters into rhythmical form), she found the enormous richness and complexity of Arabic music began to reveal itself. Many of the details she identified, counterpoint and polyphony among them, naturally threaded their way into her own pieces, eight of which (one a three-part suite) compose Inner Rhyme.
The seduction begins the moment “Return to Jaykur” opens the collection, with Sarafand setting a romantic scene for Chaker to emote against. A beautiful undulating turn by Charkey actually precedes her entrance, after which the two indulge in a sensual to-and-fro that's got amour written all over it, and for this ravishing album intro, Golub, Dunston, and Maalouf concoct a swaying backdrop that's wholly complementary to the tone of the piece. Up next, “Ushaq” courts ancient mystery in deploying a low-pitched drone as a pedal point and emphasizing Maalouf's hand drums and shakers. Chaker initiates the potent spell cast by the fourteen-minute Mkhammas Suite with an extended solo in the first part “Hawwel Ya Ghannam,” her expressions mournful supplications that quickly grow more assertive once the full ensemble joins in. The playing's even more emphatic in the central part, “Frah Al Donniyeh,” though the tempo slows halfway through to make way for a particularly entrancing turn by the leader.
Inner Rhyme deftly fuses multiple idioms into an indissoluble whole. Certainly the Arabic melodies exemplify the Eastern dimension, whereas the presence of acoustic piano adds a Western character, and the rhythms swing in ways that suggest a wedding of both. That Chaker dedicated many an hour listening to voice material is evidenced by the powerful vocal-like quality of the playing, in particular the way the patterns by her and Charkey coil around one another, an effect both serpentine and conversational. More than anything else, it's the counterpoint so marvelously exemplified by their playing (see “Ya Fajr,” the third part of the Mkhammas Suite, as a particularly alluring illustration) that makes the performances on Chaker's debut so compelling.January 2019