Claude Chalhoub [Import]

Claude Chalhoub | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 17, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Warner Spec. Mkt. UK
• ASIN: B000059ZI7
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,603 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Red Desert

2. Gnossienne

3. Baddour

4. Oriental Images

5. Don't Wake Me Up

6. Kaa

7. Two Angels

8. Melancholia

9. Don't Wake Me up (Spring Mix)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent synergy of sounds and musical styles, September 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Claude Chalhoub (Audio CD)

Claude Chalhoub's recording, produced by Michael Brook who also produced many of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's works for the Real World label is a beautiful piece of work. While there is Arabic influence in this work (Chalhoub is Lebanese), this album also has a lot of Indian influence and is a fresh take on modern sounds blending with music from different parts of the world. People with a purist taste for traditional music will not like this, because this work is cross-cultural and modern. Tasteful, evocative, and beautiful, I would not hesitate to recommend it to all those interested in cross-cultural music.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My Unschooled Ears Enjoy This CD, September 22, 2001

By 

Michael Hersh (New Orleans United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Claude Chalhoub (Audio CD)

I know little of Near Eastern or South Asian music, and little of music composition theory. However, after buying this CD on a whim, I have found I enjoy listening to it very much, and find Mr. Chaloub's violin playing and use of rhythm to be extremely compelling. It seems to me that Mr. Chaloub use of sources from many lands is driven not by a desire to engage in abstract experimentation or fit a specific commercial niche in world music, but by a desire to create beautiful music. I think it works.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nu fusion, February 20, 2004

By 

Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Claude Chalhoub (Audio CD)

We seem to be experiencing a profusion of brilliant East meets West discs lately. One thinks of the glorious Safa and Nascer, Dhafer Youssef's mind-blowing Digital Prophecy, Karsh Kale, the estimable Intercontinentals, Omar Sosa's incredible catalog of jazz beat discs, Amos Hoffman, Anthony Brown and the Asian American Orchestra's spectacular Monk's Moods, Malicool, Ben Allison's brilliant Peace Pipe, Pharoah Sanders's wailing With a Heartbeat, the Go: Organic Orchestra's incredible In the Garden, Kali Fasteau, and many others. Claude Chalhoub continues this trend with his fabulous eponymous release. Doing something that hasn't often been tried, and hasn't usually succeeded--that is, blend East and West classical musics (John Mayer's Indo-Jazz Fusion, Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road, and the Indica Project come to mind)--Chalhoub's approach succeeds mainly, I believe, because he has such deep roots in both, because he has big ears, and because he took special care to assemble just the right musicians.

What really makes this music special is its ability to be fresh and ancient, accessible and arcane, traditional and innovative, hidden and translucent, dark and light, Romantic and Neo-classical, serene and street-wise, all at once. In a move similar to what some of the better practitioners of what I call Nu Jazz have done, Chalhoub combines traditional materials (in this case primarily Lebanese musical sensibilities) with South Indian percussion, synthesizers, jazz improv, Western classical music, and ambient sounds to achieve a unique soundscape. The more western-influenced classical pieces strike me as the weakest, seeming almost naïve and static (although there are some lovely moments in "Two Angels"). The real action takes place on the more sonically rich and diverse palettes, such as "Red Desert," featuring nine instruments plus string octet, "Melancholia," with its incredibly atmospheric, mesmeric sound signature, and the two takes of "Don't Wake Me Up," with their brilliant melding of East-West classicism, flamenco guitar, drone, ambient sounds, and insistent rhythmic figures.

I agree with others that the production is not the best, though I wouldn't go so far as some have and regard it as trash. Yes, there is a regrettable and annoying loss of detail, clarity, and sound image. It would be something to hear what Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher, or François Houle and Tony Reif (the producers of Safa), could've done with this music. I am not a fan of producer Michael Brook, and wouldn't have bought this disc without the further information that is provided by the Amazon.com reviews. Perhaps Tchad Blake, who performed sonic wonders on the Bad Plus's These Are the Vistas, was brought in to do what he could with what was obviously an inferior production job. Brook's notes about the production, which he describes as "fresh, raw, energetic, slightly chaotic," sound like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. His further defense, that many in the music business bemoan the fact that more music doesn't retain a demo-like sound that would give it the emotion and excitement which get lost as music is refined and perfected to make it a professional product is simply pathetic. The very successful ECM label, which specializes in ravishingly refined and perfected music, gives the lie to this nonsense.

Which brings up another annoyance--the almost complete lack of information as to what style of music this is on the outside of the CD package. Why didn't Teldec provide customers with a clue about this music, such as who plays on it and some description of the type of music offered. As it is, from the packaging alone, one has no idea whether this is classical, new age, Bulgarian wedding music, ambient, drone, trance, or solo violin. One wonders if Chalhoub is the new Nigel Kennedy. Or perhaps a disciple of John Blake or Jenny Scheinman or Rob Thomas or Mat Maneri or Yehudi Menuhin or L. Subramaniam or . . . ? Really, people, how are we supposed to make an informed buying decision? Just trust Teldec? What if, like me, buyers have never heard of Teldec?

But forget these minor annoyances. Something very special is going down here; something that not even less-than-perfect sound production can vitiate. Don't miss out.