Aly Eissa is an Egyptian, Cairo-based oud player and vocalist, known as a member of The Handover trio (with Belgian, Oslo-based keyboard player Jonas Cambien, and fellow Egyptian violinist Ayman Asfour). Eissa was mentored in his formative years by two legendary figures in Egyptian classical music: violinist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Abdo Dagher, and oud master Hazem Shahin.
Eggshells is Eissa’s solo oud and voice album, featuring the epic, 38-minute instrumental title piece and the arrangement of the poem «Sukr At-taganni» (The Rupture of Melody) by the Ayyubid-era Arabic poet Baha ‘ al-din Zuhayr (1186-1258), where Eissa also recites the poem. Both pieces are rooted in both Egyptian classical music and local folk music traditions, but reflect Eissa’s virtuosic oud voice and expansive sonic vision.
The «Eggshells» suite presents Eissa as a modern oud player with a free approach. He is willing to walk on eggs – literally – by transforming the structured, classical Arabic music, with its ancient maqamat, with free-associative, spontaneous improvisations. Eissa masterfully weaves a series of playful folk elements, exploration of timbral and microtonal possibilities, and extended plucking and finger placement techniques into a layered and nuanced texture, anchored by a few fixed melodic motifs.
Lebanese poet and music critic Fadi El-Abdallah notes that Eissa offers a different conception of time by exploring the «geography» of the oud: a microtonality that extends far beyond the loose definition of «quarter-tones», creating fluid and non-uniform sounds that evoke particular historical periods, social layers, or geographic regions, but all reach to the soul of the oud’s sonic palette. The cover artwork by Aly Gaafar captures the Sisyphean, acrobatic journey of this suite.
The arrangement «Sukr At-taganni» conveys the poetic, fragile, and emotional essence of the poem, and its intricate, melodic phrases, but discovers this ancient poem in his own expressive manner.
Eyal Hareuveni
Aly Eissa (oud, voice)
