Ensemble Fanaa

Released on CD and digital September 10th, 2018

Ensemble Fanaa is the meeting point between a myriad of musical styles in the African-American, North African and Middle Eastern traditions. Daro Behroozi (Alto Saxophone/Bass clarinet), John Murchison (Upright Bass, Gimbri), and Dan Kurfirst (drum set/Frame Drums) utilize their thorough experience in these musics to explore the possibilities of applying approaches learned from the traditions of African-American improvisation to an emerging global musical culture. This enables them to blend and shift between and outside of a diverse range of music making practices as they continue to develop a new rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and sonic vocabulary sometimes characterized by polyrhythmic drones, chromaqamatic extemporizations, and arrhythmic grooves. Their sound is often centered around the use of the Gimbri, a bass-register instrument from Morocco that is primarily used in traditional Moroccan Healing/Trance music (Gnawa).

Video of Ensemble Fanaa in the studio recording their debut album: