 The music on this CD was recorded in the studio the day after Uitti and Fanous spent 10 minutes improvising together in concert, in a first meeting. It represents bidirectional ideas in music often and erroneously thought to be opposites: western vs. eastern, improvised vs. through-composed. In this recording they are stood on their head, examined, dissected, tortured, and ultimately reconciled. Fanous says: “Musically, Frances and I came from two distinct sets of emphases. In my case, these were non-western music, as well as chromaticism in both its contemporary classical and free jazz expressions, all funneled through the techniques of classical and flamenco guitar. In Frances’ case, it was a lifelong devotion to and mastery of parallel directions: improvisation, as well as contemporary composition at the highest level. Both were made infinitely more powerful by the deployment of ingenious extended techniques, including her revolutionary two-bow methods. Our backgrounds contained enough shared common experience to allow for a tentacular interdigitation of our improvisational languages, which was effortless and natural.” The session began with bouzouki-cello duets, in which drones played a central role, calling up a middle-eastern sound-world. Fanous writes: “As the pieces evolved, they gradually became unmoored and reverted to who they really were, but together. This process of feeling one’s way through the darkness was like navigating towards some unknown endpoint, the way the ancients used the astrolabe to navigate using the positions of the stars — Negoum in Arabic.” Liner notes by Ayman Fanous. “The spectacularly gifted cellist Frances-Marie Uitti has made a career out of demolishing musical boundaries. She has developed new techniques (most famously, playing with two bows simultaneously), collaborated with a who's who of contemporary composers, and pushed the cello into realms of unexpected beauty and expression.... Uitti showed why she might be the most interesting cellist on the planet.” Washington Post 2011 Ayman Fanous has been described as a “…master musician/composer pursuing the most imaginative alternatives to the status quo … who has honed distinctive and unconventional methods on both guitar and bouzouki, managing to synergize classical, flamenco, and free jazz techniques” (Karl Ackerman, allaboutjazz.com). His signature sound has been described as a “stylistic amalgam of Derek Bailey and Paco de Lucia” (Jay Collins, Signal to Noise). In addition to the guitar, Fanous also reaches back into his Egyptian ancestry in improvisations on the bouzouki. This is informed by many years of absorbing influences from the musical traditions of the Arab world, Turkey, India, North Africa, Persia, and the Balkans.
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