Abu Tarek: Mazen Kerbaj and Franz Hautzinger Franz Hautzinger’s Oriental Space: Franz Hautzinger

Unbeknownst to most, over the past few years Lebanese players have quietly put together the only improvised music scene in the Middle East outside of Israel. Known as the most sophisticated of Arab nations before the disastrous civil war of 1975 to1990 and despite recent political instability, Lebanon is still open to outside influences and that's how a small group of questing players first discovered Free Music a few years ago. 
Since that time this same group has organized infrequent local gigs and hosts a yearly improv fest in Beirut. As an outgrowth of this activity, collaborations between Lebanese and outside musicians are beginning to appear on CD, like the three here. Fittingly, each features trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj - also an artist and author - chief cheerleader and coordinator of the nascent scene. 
Present on Oriental Space is Lebanese guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, who divides his time between Paris and Beirut and who helps spread the word about local improv. 
Viennese trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, who has played with American guitarist Elliott Sharp and British drummer Tony Oxley, met Kerbaj by chance. Since then the two brass explorers have played duo concerts like the one approximated on Abu Tarek in Lebanon and Europe, and work as the Oriental Space quartet adding Sharif Sehnaoui and Vienna-based Helge Hinteregger, who has been part of Chris Burns' Ensemble as a saxophonist, on sampler. 
With S. Sehnaoui manipulating the only chordal instrument, Oriental Space, recorded in Vienna, reorders the sound priorities. Despite the presence of both Hautzinger and Kerbaj, the session isn't particularly brassy. Since Hinteregger is a saxophonist as well as a sampler player, the sequences introduced to the eight tracks often add pre-recorded extended reed textures to the live instrumental sounds. 
Abu Tarek
Recorded in Lebanon the disc highlights the density, volume and colors of two probing brass players. Impressionistic, at time the brass interchange takes on a jazzy subtext, although no one would confuse this CD for those 1950s Verve dates where Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge jousted musically. 
With the nine tracks ranging from less than three to less than 7½ minutes, the two provide in condensed form a compendium of the procedures they mix with guitar and sampler textures on Oriental Space. 
These take many forms. For example they can produce wet-sounding, rolling tongue thwacks, then turn their bells into cymbals as they beat on the metal while blowing through the lead pipe. Bugle-like calls take shape, but with sharp edges; strangled actions block pitches and broken octave grace notes are let loose. Barking, footstep-patterning tones and tongue fluttering are heard; as is air pushed through the instrument without valve movement. 
Howls and whines plus animal-like whimpering are followed by throttled valve twisting that reveal sounds burrowed deep inside the horn. Elsewhere, a minimalist exercise in bubbled lip action and thwarted air pressure suddenly bursts forth with liberating wah-wahs and triumphant yelps. 
Overall, Abu Tarek is most memorable when roles are divided and off-loaded. One trumpeter, for instance, plays a translucent note as the other fashions whinnying, desperate cries. Pedal point continuum is one's strategy as the other vibrates pitches concentrated with a blocked water key. Sibilant stops face off with valve percussion, and quick watery tones turn to foghorn breaths from the other hornman. 
Free improvisation in Lebanon seems to be heading for international recognition as its partisans discover a characteristic originality in their playing and composing. Perhaps one day, musical happenings in Beirut will occupy the same space in the arts section of newspapers as its political events do on the news pages. 

By Ken Waxman September 18, 2005