The Mohamad Zatari Trio features Syrian-Aleppian, Bucharest-based oud player and composer Zatari, Iranian tar and setar player and composer Sara Eslami and Indian-Romanian tabla and violin player Avadhut Kasinadhuni, coming from different but deeply rooted cultures. The trio plays original music by Zatari and Eslami that reflects Middle-Eastern and Iranian traditions and interpretations of classics by the great Iranian composer, tar, shurangiz and setar player Hossein Alizadeh and the late, prolific Egyptian composer Riad Al-Sunbati (1906-1981).

The Mohamad Zatari Trio was founded in 2019 and Istehlal (استهلاك, prologue or overture) is its debut album. It defines its open aesthetics, transcending genres and styles, ideological and geographic boundaries and reflects on the human condition in an interconnected and interrelated technological world. The album was recorded at Avanpost media in Bucharest in January 2022.

This trio likes to mess with the classical Arabic and Iranian musical traditions, and as Zatari says «future for someone is a tradition for someone else». His «Black Tea» and «Quasi-Hora» demonstrates his open and leisured approach, alternating between scales and swings like a jazz piece, with humor and inevitable pathos. The trio’s rhythmic energy drives also its brilliant, dramatic interpretation of Alizadeh’s «Zarbi Mokhalef», the cover of the Bulgarian traditional folk dance «Gankino Horo» or Al-Sunbati’s complex but joyful «Longa Ferahfeza».

Eyal Hareuveni

Mohamad Zatari (oud), Sara Eslami (tar), Avadhut Kasinadhuni (tabla)