The front cover of Trio Joubran’s second album, picturing the three brothers walking across a deserted beach dressed in elegantly dishevelled black and white, perfectly sums up the mood of the music contained within: wistful and brooding, yet always ravishingly tasteful. Samir, Wissam and Adnan Joubran grew up in Nazareth, the sons of a master oud maker, Hatim, who must be mightily proud of his boys. There are few enough oud (Arab lute) ensembles in the world and none that come close to Trio Joubran for imaginative compositions and intuitive interplay. On this second album, the solo and group performances leaves us in no doubt that these musicians really know how to harness and tease out every nuance of the oud’s deep sonorities, all perfectly captured by their recording engineer Vincent Bruley. The addition of Yousef Hbeitsch’s understated percussion parts on several tracks provides the ideal rhythmic backbone for the brothers’ more impressionist improvisations, allowing them to weave freely around each other.
These are exciting times for the oud, with several very talented young Arab players pushing the instrument beyond its classical repertoire. In many ways, Majâz is less experimental than other recent oud recordings; however, what it lacks in gimmicks and fusions it more than makes up for in straightforward, discerning musicianship.