Sufi and Jewish Music Nights, Hamburg, March 16 & 19

 The shining monolith of the Elbphilharmonie concert halls towers over the harbour of Hamburg. An architecturally individualist edifice, both inside and outside. Endless slow-gradient escalators glide the crowds up towards the 12th floor with its impressive views. But it’s once inside the halls that the full pleasure arrives. Both the grand and medium spaces are adorned with honeycombed surfaces and sweeping curves that are emphatically post-Gaudi. Their acoustic properties are formidable.

Opened in 2017, the Elbphilharmonie periodically hosts Reflektor seasons, where an individual artist will programme a series of concerts. In recent times Angelique Kidjo and John Zorn have participated. André Heller is less known but works with words across numerous art-forms, and this Austrian chansonnier commands a wise musical taste that embraces many global forms.

Heller opened his season with Sufi Night, uniting the traditions of Morocco and Pakistan. The young Essaouiran singer and guembri player Hind Ennaira represents the female minority in Gnaoua music, here joined by the seven-strong Black Koyo group. Hicham Bilali is the other lead vocalist, but all performers sing and dance communally, powered by the metal snicking of their qraqebs, which are similar to castanets. It takes them about five minutes to energise the audience, making repeating escalations of vocal-percussive interlocks, gradually introducing higher and higher-kicking dance moves, as different show-offs move to the front. Further peaking is provided when a pair of big, thwacked drums are hoisted, as the group moves around the expansive stage in a mobile cluster. The composite sound is ideally projected by the house.

Following an intermission, singers Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad are surrounded by Qawwali and Brothers, all seated, with the expected pairs of drums and harmoniums. Unusually, these Pakistanis also have an electronic keyboard in their second row. Everyone sings, and the lead vaulting changes throughout, as each seeks to attain greater levels of expression. Due to sharing a double bill, the songs were in shortened form, including the almost compulsory ‘Allah Hoo’ and ‘Mustt Mustt’. Compared to the Gnaoua group, this was fairly introverted music, and it would seem that switching the running order might have been wise, instead peaking with the Moroccan dancers. This was probably the shortest qawwali gig ever witnessed!

Jewish Music Night was more ambitious, presenting three rather than two vocally led ensembles, which inevitably made for a very extended evening, with no break between the first and second acts. It might be expected that the NYC representatives would be the most adventurous, but The Brooklyn Cantors turned out to be the most old-fashioned, purist and formal bunch of the evening. Their repertoire sounded very much like what might be delivered in an actual synagogue, and there was a very puzzling tendency for each of the four singers to perform alone, without harnessing a group sound. Composer Jeremiah Lockwood swapped between electric guitar and keyboards, with a string quartet playing on some songs. Considering that they only had a 45-minute set, the repertoire was persistently fragmented into small segments of the full ensemble.

The Voices of Yemen are another proposition entirely, ramming together a quartet of hardcore traditional vocalists/clappers/percussionists (one of them a rabbi) and a largely long-haired desert-stoner rock outfit, with electric guitar and bass (Zorn henchman Shanir Blumenkranz on the latter), plus drums and an extensive percussion array. Ravid Kahalani (of Yemen Blues) is an extroverted presence, but his three colleagues match him in escalating exuberance, their voices weathered and deep. Guitarist Ofer Mizrahi deals out high-crying psychedelic solos that bleed into the group vocals, spouting out in between their lines. The singers also use goblet drums, bongos and a large tin can, which sometimes cut through higher than the backing line of conventional drums/percussion. This wild ritual intensified right up to the intermission.

Piyut Ensemble (© Daniel Dittus)

When the audience returned, the mood was transformed, taken down by the large Piyut Ensemble (rooted in the Tafilalt region of Morocco), with their semi-circle of singers, percussionists, oud, flutes and guitar. This well-combed collective made their music communal, devoted to a oneness of chanting, spreading an aura of calm ascension. This was emphatically music for the late evening, suitably, for darkness and contemplation, an equality of intent blanketing the players. It was more of a ritual than a performance, introverted, although this didn’t prevent their extended songs reaching out to the mesmerised audience. It was a successful curve, down from the near hysteria of the Yemenites, cruising deeply into a self-involved expressiveness.