Souvenance is a double album of music for oud, quartet and string orchestra by the Tunisian oud player and composer Anouar Brahem. It was his first album since The Astounding Eyes of Rita (2009) and his first work written for strings. The title means "remembrance". The eleven pieces took a long time to write, in years when Brahem's attention was taken by the upheavals that began in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread to neighbouring countries.
The quartet brings back pianist François Couturier, with Klaus Gesing on bass clarinet and Björn Meyer on electric bass. Behind them plays the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, conducted by Pietro Mianiti. Brahem had first imagined a project led by the piano, but the idea of a chamber orchestra grew during writing and rehearsals. He prepared the orchestrations in Tunisia with the Austrian composer Johannes Berauer. The album was recorded in May 2014 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due.
Brahem wanted the strings to have "an organic function in the music", and they rarely swell. They mostly hold long tones and soft textures while oud, piano and bass clarinet carry the lines. The first disc opens with the twelve-minute Improbable Day. On the second, Kasserine takes its name from a Tunisian city, and Stephen Graham of Marlbank heard it as a lament. The set closes with Nouvelle Vague, a Brahem tune first heard on Khomsa (1995), here arranged for orchestra by the Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits.
Brahem himself has said, "I don't claim a direct link between my compositions and the events that have taken place in Tunisia", while admitting that they affected him deeply. In The New York Times Nate Chinen called the album "a work of tensile beauty, by turns hopeful and foreboding", and singled out Gesing's bass clarinet. John Kelman of All About Jazz heard in it "a spiritual narrative that explores the depths of emotion". In July 2014 the quartet premiered the music with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, opening the 50th International Festival of Carthage.
This is the double CD on ECM Records, catalogue number ECM 2423/24, first released in November 2014.
