أحمد [Ahmed]: Sama’a (Audition) review – a wild, world-spanning act of musical devotion

In April 2022, the wild and inquisitively wilful British free-jazz keyboardist and composer Pat Thomas was improvising with his eyes shut in the company of his quartet أحمد [Ahmed] at Glasgow’s Glue Factory. The music was dedicated to the 1950s-70s legacy of the late Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk bassist, oud player and early global-music pioneer Ahmed Abdul-Malik, the inspiration for the group’s work. When Thomas emerged from his trance, he was astonished to hear that an ecstatic crowd had been dancing the night away around him.

The artwork for Sama’a (Audition) by أحمد [Ahmed].

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Since أحمد [Ahmed]’s inception, their collective heat has fused abstract improv and groove music from all over the world: Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, dub, jungle, electronics, and the 1990s free-improv of Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill and drummer Steve Noble have all inspired Thomas. Saxophonist Seymour Wright has absorbed the sax vocabulary of Evan Parker and the insights into collective improv and avant-swing of AMM drummer and teacher Eddie Prévost. Eclectic partners Joel Grip (bass) and Antonin Gerbal (drums) power and expand these infectious, volatile energies.

The Arabic term sama’a loosely translates as meditative listening to music and poetry, taken from Thomas’s perspective as a follower of Sufism, and this new set’s four tracks manifest that spirit. The opening Ya Annas (Oh, People) joins ghostly split-note sax sounds with graceful bowed-bass figures before turning to a pulsating piano-vamping dance and then a furious melee, while Isma’a (Listen) is a drum’n’bass hook that evolves into hoarsely urgent free-sax improv against exhilaratingly splashy, pummelling piano chords. El Haris (Anxious) resolves brittle, pad-flapping horn exhalations and long-tone harmonies into a gripping robotic strut, and Farah ‘Alaiyna (Joy Upon Us) begins as delightfully dissonant folk-dance and becomes rocketing jazz swing. The group’s Monk tribute follows in 2026 which on this evidence is a riveting prospect.

Also out this month

Guitarist John Scofield and bassist Dave Holland have been regular collaborators for years, but Memories of Home (ECM) is their first duo album, equally sharing their boppishly hip, country-bluesy, warmly engaging originals. Scofield’s voicelike harmonies and sure-footed chord-rooted improv on his dreamy Meant to Be, and Holland’s deep, enveloping tone on his luxuriously languid swinger Mr B (Dedicated to Ray Brown) are highlights of a very classy set.

Unseparate (Out of Your Head), the second release by Canadian composer and flautist/saxophonist Anna Webber’s powerful big band co-led with her saxophonist compatriot Angela Morris, joins this inventive pair’s jazz, contemporary-classical and folk enthusiasms in a subtle balance of their ingenious arrangements and their fine young lineup’s improv ideas.

And UK composer Mike Westbrook’s epic 1980 session The Cortège – a celebration of landmark 20th-century European literature as well as cutting-edge jazz – reappears as the previously unissued The Cortège Live at the BBC 1980 (Cadillac).