Guitarist and bouzouki player Ayman Fanous announces Brooklyn Stories, a staggering 5xCD boxset (also available digitally) arriving April 24, 2026 via Infrequent Seams. Spanning duos, trios, and quartets with a remarkable cast of improvisers, the collection stands as a monumental document of deep listening, fearless interplay, and transdisciplinary imagination. The first single, “Trio With William Parker, Tatsuya Nakatani – 4,” featuring William Parker and Tatsuya Nakatani, is out now, with pre-orders live on Bandcamp beginning February 24.
Working across jazz, avant-garde, and free improvisation, Fanous positions himself in conversation with the very artists who helped define those languages. For listeners attuned to the expansive spirits of Matthew Shipp, Alice Coltrane, Nate Wooley, Mary Halvorson, Luke Stewart, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton, Brooklyn Stories will feel less like a debut and more like a revelation long in the making.
Although Fanous has recorded before, he calls this collection “a debut in some regards.” It is his first large-scale statement as a leader, and its ambition is unmistakable. A professional scientist and physician whose research spans schizophrenia, genomics, and psychiatry, Fanous occupies a rare position: an “outsider” to the full-time musician’s circuit, yet deeply embedded in the language and lineage of creative music. One glance at his collaborators dispels any notion of dilettantism. This is serious, hard-earned music made in communion with masters.
The scope of Brooklyn Stories is immense. Across five discs, Fanous engages in a shifting series of constellations: extended trios with Parker and Nakatani; intimate and explosive duos with Joe McPhee; a quartet featuring McPhee, Jason Kao Hwang, and Nakatani; luminous trio and quartet configurations with the late Susan Alcorn; searching dialogues and ensembles with Ned Rothenberg; string-driven trios with Mark Feldman and Thomas Ulrich; and rhythmically charged quartets with Hwang, James Ilgenfritz, and Nakatani. The set closes with a trio alongside pianist Denman Maroney, bringing yet another textural dimension into focus.
The recordings span key moments and spaces: September 20, 2013 at Sonia Vlahcevic Hall, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia (Disc 1), and May 29–30, 2015 at Firehouse Space in Brooklyn, New York (Discs 2–5). Across these sessions, Fanous moves between classical guitar, electric guitar, and bouzouki, revealing a vocabulary that is at once pitch-centered and open-ended, steeped in flamenco and classical technique yet untethered from orthodoxy.
The liner notes, written by Elliott Sharp, offer both personal recollection and critical framing. Sharp recounts first encountering Fanous in the early 1990s at the Knitting Factory, receiving a cassette that immediately revealed “inventiveness of pitch-based improvising” and “simmering intensity.” Their subsequent studio meeting confirmed it: the depth was real, the technique abundant but never gratuitous. Sharp raises a compelling question that hovers over the entire boxset: how do Fanous’ parallel vocations—scientist, doctor, improviser—feed each other in ways that produce music of such intensity and structural clarity?
Fanous himself traces his roots to acoustic playing, drawing on flamenco and classical approaches alongside flatpicking, with influences ranging from Braxton and Taylor to Webern and Downtown experimentalism. A pivotal mentorship came through his duo with the late Bern Nix, an experience he once described as his true musical education. That lineage—harmolodic openness, clean timbre, structural elasticity—echoes throughout Brooklyn Stories.
One of the revelations of the collection is Fanous’ fluency on bouzouki. While often associated with Greek rembetika and broader Mediterranean traditions, in his hands the instrument becomes a vehicle for cascading modal improvisation—Mixolydian, Aeolian, Phrygian—filtered through a personal, non-microtonal lens. Rapid tremolo passages and rippling textures create sheets of sound that both anchor and destabilize the ensembles, expanding the harmonic field without overwhelming it.
As remixing and mastering engineer for the project, Sharp had the rare vantage point of hearing the music both “globally and granularly,” noting the extraordinary level of sonic empathy at work. What emerges across the five discs is not a guitarist imposing his will on a cast of luminaries, but an artist fully embedded in dialogue—listening, responding, shaping, and surging forward with saturated joy.
The rollout begins February 24 with the announcement and first single release, “Trio With William Parker, Tatsuya Nakatani – 4.” A second single, “Duo with Joe McPhee – 2,” arrives March 10, followed by “Trio With Susan Alcorn, Ned Rothenberg” on April 7. The full 5-CD boxset lands April 24, 2026.
Brooklyn Stories is more than a document of performances; it is a cartography of relationships—between instruments, between improvisers, between disciplines, and between lifetimes of inquiry. In an era of fragmented listening and disposable output, Fanous offers something immersive and demanding: five discs of rigor, vulnerability, and fearless exchange. It is both a culmination and an opening statement.
No comments:
Post a Comment