Rihab Azar & Kolektif Istanbul, East Neuk Festival review: 'Thunderous Turkish-Balkan grooves'

Kolektif Istanbul, Crail Community Hall ★★★★

Among guitar-like instruments, the oud, the fretless Arabian lute, has a distinct voice of its own, freighted with Middle Eastern culture and fascinating when in the company of more conventional – to western ears – strings. This was the case when London-based Syrian oud player Rihab Azar made a welcome return to the East Neuk Festival, this time in the eclectic and empathetic company of violinist Donald Grant, cellist Su-a Lee and percussionist Antonio Romero.

Ranging from melancholy to taut urgency, as in their opening piece by Egyptian composer M. Abdul Wahab, the quartet also found ample scope for interplay in Azar’s own compositions, such as the stealthy thrumming of oud over tick-tocking strings in The Pull of Time, while Questions, composed for a Grenfell Tower memorial event, saw a gorgeous violin lamentation and whistling harmonics lead on to an urgent finale.

Following the delicacy of Azar’s ensemble, it was something of a culture shock to move to Crail Community Hall and the thunderous Turkish-Balkan grooves of Kolektif Istanbul. It’s not every band that would kick off with a sousaphone solo, their breathy bass man, Ertan Şahin, generating a harrumphing, didgeridoo-like discourse from the instrument coiled around him before the rest of the band – clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, drums and keyboard – gradually kicked in.

Their consistently high-energy brass and reed blast was particularly led by the fiery shrilling of Talat Karaoğlu’s clarinet, while the imploring singing of trumpeter and vocalist Asli Dogan managed, more or less, to rise above this maelstrom of breath power. They probably could have played all night: as it was they incited the unlikely spectacle of a sizeable section of a normally sedate ENF audience dancing enthusiastically in front of the stage.

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