Yesterday night (Feb. 6) we played the first “A” Trio gig in a year, almost day for day; our last concert was on February 8 2020, at the Arter Museum in Istanbul. It was also the first time Raed Yassin and myself see Sharif Sehnaoui since the Istanbul gig (it is the first time I ever spend a year without seeing Sharif ever since we met in 1995). We all met in Raed’s hotel room in Stuttgart, where the gig was staged as part of the Eclat Festival. I say staged because it was literally what it was: a huge room that sounds fantastically good, with only three musicians on stage, two sound engineers behind the mixing console, and four cameramen in the room. Playing for the screen of course; our new modus operandi in the time of the pandemic (I miss so much the small concerts for very little amount of people that we managed to do in the summer of 2020). But even though I am not a fan of playing (or watching) live streamed gigs, it was something else to play one with the “A” Trio. It is always something else to play with the “A” Trio anyways. An experience I cannot compare to anything else. And it has been going for 19 years now.
I Want to Play Music with You!
I remember very vividly sending an email to Sharif 19 years ago (he was still living in Paris back then), to tell him that I finally found a guy in Beirut who wants to play music with me. Our kind of music. And that he was a very capable and inventive double-bass player. The guy’s name was (and still is!) Raed Yassin. After playing some private sessions as a trio with the late Edgar Aho on saxophone, we quickly settled on playing in duo. The current was passing in both ways, and I was quite excited to introduce Raed to Sharif whenever the latter would be back for the summer holidays. The first meeting happened on stage in August of 2002, as part of the second edition of Irtijal festival. A week later we entered the studio to record our first album that was simply titled A hinting as much to the primal scream than to the first letter of the Arabic and Latin alphabets (the band was still named after our three names, and it is only after years of referring to it as the trio of the album A that we adopted the name the “A” Trio).
A has long been our only album, and the three of us ended up disliking it to the point of discouraging people to buy it. The reason was that it captured the trio at a very early stage, where our individual playing was still very much informed by what we were listening to at that period (namely European free improv from the sixties to the eighties), and quite far from what will become our distinctive sound that is documented on later albums like Music to Our Ears (2011) and Live at Nickelsdorf (2012), or in our live concerts. But listening to A again today, I think it is not that bad, and it an an important document of the very early days of the trio and most importantly of the nascent Lebanese improvised and experimental music scene that developed so much in the following 20 years.
Advertising Break:
Before going any further, it is good to let you know that the “A” Trio has finally a Bandcamp, and that you can check there (and buy!) all the albums I am referring to in this post and some others. And if you like our music, it might be a good idea to follow the page too, because we will be regularly releasing some exclusive material there.
The “A” Trio released only three albums in 19 years (if we except those in collaboration with other musicians or bands, and that i will talk about later), of which one is a live. It is also a band that does not tour that much since each member has numerous other projects and obligations and it is difficult to find time (and gigs!) to put together regular tours. This is why we were so excited and looking forward to be on our longest tour in May 2020 in Europe, a tour that would also act as the launch of our new studio album, recorded in Berlin in 2018. The tour was of course cancelled, and the album release postponed to when it would be possible to tour again. Today we finally decided to release the album at the end of 2021. It will be on the mighty Morphine Records, and I am very glad to finally make public one track (yes, this is a world premiere!). It is titled Folks Music and it sounds once again nothing like the other “A” Trio albums.
As for the tour, it won’t happen this year since things are still uncertain enough; however, we are already planning for a bigger tour – and more new releases – next year, to celebrate our 20th anniversary!
With a Little Help from my Friends
The “A” Trio works so much as a unit (as opposed to three individuals), that collaborations with other musicians or like minded groups seems very natural. Over the year, we recorded some studio sessions and some live ones with groups and musicians as different as AMM, Alan Bishop, The Necks, Michel Doneda or Lebanese punk rock band Scrambled Eggs. With the latter, we even recorded our only song, Koji Kabuto Ya Akruto, composed and sung by Raed Yassin and yours truly.
With each collaboration, the trio managed to go in totally new and uncharted territories, while remaining true to itself. The two other collaborations that were released on albums (that you can find on our Bandcamp – yes this is called hardcore advertising) attest of this capacity of working as an identified unit inside a larger group: Burj al Imam with Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies…) where the trio adventures in weird folk territories, and AAMM with the British pioneering improv group – and long time heroes of the “A” Trio – AMM. One of the most fantastic collaborations we ever had was the latest to date: a sextet joining the “A” Trio and The Necks for a four hour concert in Berlin. The good news is that we have a multi-track recording of it, and the bad news is that we still need to find the proper time to listen to it (not to mention mixing it) and the right way to release it. I hope I will have some news regarding this possible release soon (I heard you can be the first to know, should you be following the “A” Trio Bandcamp).
A Last One for the Road
While waiting to reunite, we took some time during the pandemic to try to work together from a distance, like most musicians. Unlike most musicians though, we decided not to try to play “live” via videoconference. We even devised ways to play together in total deaf-mode, where none of us heard what the two others were playing. We recorded so far 4 pieces of music using two different “deaf-methods”, and the result was satisfying enough that we decided to pursue the experience and eventually release an album. Meanwhile we released one of the tracks titled Over, on a fundraising compilation in benefit of Beirut after the summer blast; I think it is the best way to finish this post, a perfect soundtrack for our (and your?) future.