Marc Sinan, Julia Hülsmann

Fasil is a song cycle on the life of Aisha, the youngest wife of the Prophet Muhammad. It was devised by guitarist Marc Sinan and writer Marc Schiffer, and the songs are by pianist Julia Hülsmann. The improvisations start from fragments of Koran recitation that Sinan recorded in Turkey. Together with Hülsmann's songs they form a fasil, an Ottoman suite, and the album was Sinan's debut on ECM.

Sinan has a Turkish-Armenian mother and a German father and trained as a classical guitarist. The project grew from his work on Baroque passacaglias by Biber, Couperin, Bach and Weiss, and from the wish to build a bridge from them to Islamic music. Schiffer wove fragments of the Koran, the Hadith and old Persian poetry into his texts, and Hülsmann set them without a story outline. The singer is Yelena Kuljić in the role of Aisha, with Lena Thies on viola and Hülsmann's trio with Marc Muellbauer and Heinrich Köbberling. It was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in March 2008, the same month as the trio's The End of a Summer, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

In Turkey Sinan recorded improvisations by the imam Kamil Hodja in the makam tradition, and transcriptions of these became Sure 6/51 and Sure 81 Taksimi. Short instrumental taksims link the songs, which follow Aisha from youth to her role as trusted adviser and political leader, and finally to a revered figure. The Struggle Is Over and the closing You Open My Eyes are the longest songs, both around seven minutes. In Fono Forum, Berthold Klostermann noted that Hülsmann avoids surface orientalism and writes introverted music of great inner calm, leaving room for guitar, viola and voice.

Mark Hudson in the Daily Telegraph wrote that Kuljić's singing "has an odd, stark sensuality", while Hülsmann's piano "holds this featherlight confection of Eastern and Western elements together". The German magazine Stereo made it its audiophile highlight of the month. Ulf Drechsel on rbb Kulturradio described a meeting of classical guitar and jazz, composition and improvisation, Muslim tradition and Western thought.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2076, first released on 27 February 2009, with a 32-page booklet carrying the libretto and notes.