Led by oud player Gordon Grdina, The Marrow brings together Arabic Maqam and Persian Dastgah with western improvised music and jazz.

The music is intricate and delicate, holding a deep connection to the past while looking forward. The group plays original and traditional works with Hank Roberts (cello), Mark Helias (bass), and Hamin Honari (tombak and daf).

The JUNO award-winning Vancouver-based guitarist, composer improvisor, 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 desperate extremes.

Two new 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 expands to include the captivating Persian vocalist Fathieh Honari, while Duo Work is a dizzying multi-directional collaboration between Grdina’s electric and MIDI guitars and the virtuosic German drummer Christian Lillinger.

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 improvisors Hank Roberts (cello) and Mark Hallas (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 element of that because I don’t speak Farsi, though I connect with Fathieh’s beautiful vocals as a sensory feeling and an emotional expression.”

1. Not of Them
2. Raqib
3. Raqs e Paravaneh
4. Break the Branch
5. Qalandar

This lushly orchestrated, wholly impassioned new recording opens on the twelve minute musical opus Not of Them, and is a stunning construction, so much so that has to be heard from start to finish to truly be fully appreciated. That is then backed by the all-embracing Raqib and the sensory push found within Raqs e Paravaneh, the album rounding out on the forlorn-hued, yet stirringly embodied Break the Branch, coming to a righteous close on the haunting Baluchi traditional song Qalandar.

Musicians:
Gordon Grdina - oud
Mark Helias - bass
Hank Roberts - cello
Hamin Honari - percussion
Fathieh Honari - voice

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