Obstacles there are none even if – like us – you have small Latin and less Greek.
Swedish Greek pianist Joel Lyssarides is in a summit meeting, it’s not too grandiose to describe Arcs & Rivers as such – with bouzouki virtuoso Georgios Prokopiou.
It is a fusion of traditions, post-Bill Evans modern jazz modalities and more spliced to a traditional world as exemplified in popular cultural consciousness with a sound often identified with the great composer Mikis Theodorakis that nobody saw coming beyond Zorba…
… apart from a certain Eureka moment over at the A&R (artists and repertoire) department at German label ACT whose usually spreadsheet directed antenna must have twitched into plate smashing overdrive given this remarkable coming together.
Ancient meets modern
Seeing the possibilities of the long necked lute and use of rebetika traditions in a jazz context and running with it takes some doing.
Let’s not get too carried away because this is crossover. Frankly we don’t give a toss if it is or not.
Taverna tales
But the Stockholm born Lyssarides, who turns 32 at the end of October, proved himself closer to the guard rails of jazz on the highly melodic modal reveries found on Stay Now that helped ease us for one – and many more looking at the streaming figures perhaps – out of the dismal ennui that the tail end of the Covid years ushered in two years ago. And fast forward there’s plenty to like here on a brand new tabula rasa route to the roots of taverna tales sprinkled with the salt of the sea.
When Prokopiou asserts himself on these instrumentals more as on the encore like Stelios Zafeiriou homage it’s more traditional. That’s an entirely different thing again.
So focus on the real star turns of the album the luminous Lyssarides tune ‘Orange Moon’ and moving ‘Anamnesis’ which we have playlisted a lot. The solely penned Prokopiou tunes I don’t like so much but the duo co-writes are better, specifically the drama laden ‘A Night in Piraeus.’