The mission of the
Arabesque Music Ensemble (formerly the Chicago Classical Oriental
Ensemble) is to recreate the sounds of the Near East from earlier
periods. They are like early music consorts in classical music and New
Orleans revivalists in jazz. The Ensemble’s latest CD consists of songs
by three Egyptian composers of the 1930s and ’40s, Zakariyya Ahmad,
Muhammad al-Qasabji and Riyad al- Sunbati—roughly the Cole Porter,
Irving Berlin and George Gershwin of their time and place. With
painstakingly authentic arrangements, the Ensemble glides through
octave-warping vocals and the mystical sheen of unearthly chords, all
of it set to a steady percussive groove.
