Flow
Kinan Azmeh & NDR Bigband
works by Kinan Azmeh
arranged and conducted by Wolf Kerschek
catalog number 21134
I was the Damascene in New York and the New Yorker in Damascus.
I am now more interested in being the New Yorker in New York and the Damascene in Damascus...
Both cities with all their contrasting qualities are intellectually stimulating to me. Places, people, nature, tragedies and celebrations, all of these elements have found their way into the music I create. Being in a constant state of FLOW is now my new zone of comfort.”
Kinan Azmeh
... Azmeh’s impressive 2021 album "Flow", recorded with the NDR Bigband from Germany ... is another example of the capacious mutability of American energies — with Ellingtonian orchestration fusing with melodic modes from the Middle East. Seth Colter Walls in New York Times
All truly great orchestras always resemble fascinating mythological animals. They are living organisms capable of abducting you with their pervasive powers, enveloping you in their mighty sound. The hero who can tame such a "beast" with its dozens of heads is an adept Odysseus-like "master of schemes", more skilful than the most powerful sorcerer. In today´s show, we give you our own wizard-hero, the superb musician, composer and clarinet player, Kinan Azmeh. In his most recent project, "FLOW", Kinan's music is presented in prodigious arrangements by Wolf Kerschek. Azmeh takes on the masters of jazz improvisation, the fantastic musicians of the legendary NDR Bigband and comes out triumphant. Together they reveal Azmeh´s compelling music in a completely new light: a soundscape of inexhaustible nuances. Maja Vasiljevic, Radio Clásica
Kinan Azmeh ist ein wunderbarer Improvisator, ein geistvoller Musiker und Komponist. In Flow schenkt er uns acht epische Erzählungen voller überraschender Wendungen; um es mit David Foster Wallace zu sagen: ein unendlicher Spaß. Ralf Döring in Jazzthetik Magazine
With 'Flow' Kinan Azmeh adds another pearl on his already impressive string of very special recordings. Henk Jansen in De Klarinet, The Netherlands