Cyminology

As Ney is the ECM debut of Cyminology, the Berlin quartet led by the German-Iranian singer Cymin Samawatie. She sings in Farsi, her own lyrics alongside verse by the Sufi masters Rumi and Hafez and the 20th-century poet Forough Farrokhzaad. The band around her is a classic jazz piano trio, and the result is a quiet, intercultural chamber jazz in which the sound and metre of Persian shape the music.

Samawatie was born in Germany to Iranian parents and grew up with both languages. She studied classical percussion and piano in Hannover, then jazz voice and composition in Berlin, and founded the group in 2002. Her partners are the pianist Benedikt Jahnel, the bassist Ralf Schwarz and the Indian drummer and percussionist Ketan Bhatti. The album was recorded in spring 2008 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.

The title comes from Rumi's Song of the Reed-Flute, and the title track, close to ten minutes, opens the album with his lines. The longest piece, Kalaam - Dassthaa - Delbasstegi, is a fifteen-minute suite in three parts to which all four members contributed. Naagofte sets a Farrokhzaad poem to music by Jahnel. In Die Zeit Stefan Hentz described a warm voice that takes up the rhythm of the language and shapes its melody into soft arcs. The trio, he wrote, supports it and turns the unfamiliar metres into small, flickering patterns. Samawatie's singing is pure and direct, with little ornament. Bhatti supplies a laid-back pulse and a lot of textural detail, and nothing is made to sound exotic.

Critics stressed the balance of the mix. In JazzTimes Josef Woodard heard "contemplative jazz and chamber-esque qualities" converging in a blend of Persian, European, American and even Brazilian languages. Ray Comiskey wrote in The Irish Times (April 2009) that "restraint, rather than overt emotion, is their way", and found the performances remarkably unified. In Jazz Journal Michael Tucker praised Bhatti's sensitivity to sound and heard Sufi-touched but definitely contemporary chamber jazz. Cyminology went on to record Saburi and Phoenix for ECM.

CD edition, ECM 2084, first released in January 2009.