Abdo Buda Marconi - Oltremura (2023)

Oltremura, the second CD by the trio formed by ASHTI ABDO, MANUEL BUDA and FABIO MARCONI, displaSy, from the opening track a reached maturity, testified by the presence of four original compositions, the first written entirely by the trio. The pieces express a very varied and refined compositional style with surprising polyrhythm, melancholic ballads, and energetic rhythms.
The Mediterranean and Middle Eastern matrix, recognized by the three as the only musical origin of the trio, opens up to veiled excursions with a contemporary flavor and references to the Jewish nigun and some archaic form of blues. Everything develops with arrangements full of details and surprises, in sinuous paths that lead the listener to explore new solutions and timbre mixes.
The repertoire incudes beside the four originals, few traditional tunes ranging from a great classic Balkan like Ajde Jano, arranged in an almost contrapuntal texture – interwoven with a sudden interlude with a Latin-jazz flavor - to Trantela, an Azerbaijani tarantella that the Trio discvered thanks to the Syrian oud player Orwa Saleh (with whom a fervent collaboration is underway) that builds a surprising bridge between Southern Italy and the Caucasus.
Ashti Abdo's voice solo reinterprets an Om, of the Kurdish musician Hafez Nazeri, while gives soul to Dêre Sorê a Kurdish traditional song, where the intense pizzicato cadence of Manuel Buda dissolves into a tangle of strings vigorously backing a popular sing-along melody.
the interplay of the three musicians is particularly effective: in Bê Sînor, Fabio Marconi transforms the Ashti’s theme into a sequence of chords and walking bass with a sub-Saharan flavor, on which the other two return in pentatonic flights on saz and classical guitar in a new and unexpected mood.
Beginning from the title track, Oltremura, the Trio creates a musical worldlived by people able to move among different settings, a musical life able to move among different soundscapes: from the Middle East to Africa, Southern Italy and radio mainstream. A well described and presented by Bê Sînor (borderless).