Guitarist and oud master Gordon Grdina releases two diverse yet equally stunning new albums via his Attaboygirl Records label on February 16, 2024
Gordon Grdina’s The Marrow with Fathieh Honari melds Persian and improvised music with Hank Roberts, Mark Helias and Hamin Honari, while Duo Work is an exhilarating improvisational meeting between Grdina and drummer Christian Lillinger
“The Marrow is] nothing short of extraordinary, genuinely pushing the envelope in terms of how far an artist can take both Middle Eastern maqam music and American jazz.” – New York Music Daily
The JUNO award-winning, Vancouver-based guitarist, composer, improviser, and master oud player Gordon Grdina is a dauntless musical explorer whose interests run the gamut from free improvisation and progressive jazz to traditional Arabic music, often weaving deftly between those disparate extremes. The first of the releases on his own Attaboygirl Records imprint showcase the stunning diversity of Grdina’s imagination. The third release by his jazz-Arabic music hybrid band The Marrow, after its 2018’s Ejdeha debut and following 2020’s Safar-e-Daroon ,expands to include the captivating Persian vocalist Fathieh Honari.
While Grdina often moves from guitar to oud within the space of a single project or album, these two new efforts draw a hard line between the two. Gordon Grdina’s The Marrow with Fathieh Honari is a showcase for his deft oud work. The Marrow was originally conceived as a means of bridging the worlds of Arabic, jazz and improvised music. The core quartet brings Grdina together with veteran improvisers Hank Roberts (cello) and Mark Helias (bass) and the Iranian-Canadian percussionist Hamin Honari. The new album adds a rich additional layer with the addition of Hamin’s mother, the lauded Persian vocalist Fathieh Honari, through a mix of traditional songs, mid-20th century Iranian popular music, and classic Rumi poems set to Grdina’s original compositions.
“In Persian music they say that it’s not really music unless there’s poetry,” Grdina says. “So adding vocals pushes the album more towards a Persian aesthetic. I miss some elements of that because I don’t speak Farsi, though I connect with Fathieh’s beautiful vocals as a sensory feeling and an emotional expression.”
Grdina’s introduction to Persian music came largely through the Honari family. He befriended and began to collaborate with guitarist Hidayat Honari while in college, early in his investigation of the oud. Through Hidayat, Grdina met his brother Hamin; his mother Fathieh; and his father, the kamanche player, multi-instrumentalist and polymath Reza Honari.
“Reza became kind of a musical father figure to me,” Grdina says. “Over the course of a million gigs and conversations and tours with him, I learned a lot about Persian music and about music in general.” After recording a few of Fathieh’s overdubs for the album, Reza passed away earlier this year. The album is dedicated to him. Mesmerizing opener “Not of Them” and the brooding “Break the Branch” both place the transcendent imagery of the revered 13th-century Persian poet Rumi within the context of Grdina’s evocative, culture-blurring music. “Raqib” and “Raqs e Parvaneh” both stem from the catalogue of radio songs popular in the 60s and 70s, while the album closes with the haunting Baluchi traditional song “Qalandar.” The piece is particular meaningful for Fathieh, who hails from the traditionally persecuted Baluchi people of southeastern Iran, and whose harrowing story involves a trek over the mountains into Pakistan during the 1980s.
photo Genevieve Monro
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Gordon Grdina
Gordon Grdina is a JUNO Award-winning oud/guitarist whose career has spanned continents, decades and constant genre exploration throughout avant-garde jazz, free-form improvisation, contemporary indie rock and Arabic. Grdina has performed and collaborated with a wide array of field-leading artists including Gary Peacock, Paul Motion, Marc Ribot, Mats Gustafsson, Mark Feldman, and Eyvind Kang. He currently leads multiple ensembles in Vancouver and New York, including the Gordon Grdina Quartet with Oscar Noriega, Russ Lossing, and Satoshi Takeishi; Square Peg with Christian Lillinger, Mat Maneri, and Shahzad Ismaily; Nomad Trio with Matt Mitchell and Jim Black; The Twain with Koichi Makigami, Michiyo Yagi and Tamaya Honda, and Haram, an Arabic/avant-garde ensemble that re-envisions the Arabic, Persian and Sudanese repertoire of the 50s and 60s from a modern improviser’s lens.
Gordon Grdina’s The Marrow with Fathieh Honari
Attaboygirl Records – ABG-8
Release date February 16, 2024
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